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''fan-tan'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260202202216-00-⌔
fan-tan - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
fan-tan (uncountable)
- A Chinese gambling game in which coins or other small objects are placed upon a table, usually under a cup, and the players bet as to what remainder will be left when the sum of the counters is divided by four.
- ✤ He came in an said Pack, we were booked for Macau. When we got there, I played fantan in the Lisboa and he crossed over into Zhongshan.1
- A card game in which the cards are played in sequences upon the table, and the winner is the first player to have no cards left.
Etymology
Borrowed from Cantonese 番攤/番摊 (faan taan, literally “repeated divisions”).
Printed 2026-06-28.
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Link to original Footnotes
1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 85: ↩
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