wild card

noun

1

: an unknown or unpredictable factor

2

: one picked to fill a leftover playoff or tournament berth after regularly qualifying competitors have all been determined

3

usually wildcard

ˈwī(-ə)l(d)-ˌkärd 

: a symbol (such as ? or *) used in a keyword database search to represent the presence of zero, one, or more than one unspecified characters

Examples of wild card in a Sentence

The joker is a wild card.

Taxes are the wild card in this election.

The team made it into the play-offs as the wild card.

Recent Examples on the Web

This guide is broken down into recommendations based on Santal 33’s components: smokey, woody, floral, and musk, plus some wild card options for good measure. —Rose Dommu, Them, 11 Dec. 2024

The Giants, a wild card team out of the NFC that year, beat the undefeated Patriots. —Scott Thompson, Fox News, 3 Dec. 2024

One wild card in the next leg of the EV wars: tariffs, which Trump threatened Monday to increase on goods from China, Mexico and Canada on his first day in office, which would likely drive up car prices. —J.j. McCorvey, NBC News, 26 Nov. 2024

And the weather Wintry weather is always a wild card for Thanksgiving and Christmas travel by plane and automobile. —David Koenig, The Christian Science Monitor, 26 Nov. 2024

Word History

Etymology

wild card, playing card with arbitrarily determined value

First Known Use

1971, in the meaning defined at sense 1