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

Political Developments Politics, as always, is a wild card. —Andrew Rosen, Forbes, 27 Feb. 2025

Seidler may have had an inkling that, beginning in 2022, a third wild card would be added to each league’s playoff format. —Tom Krasovic, San Diego Union-Tribune, 26 Feb. 2025

There’s a lot of moving pieces at Comcast right now and a big wild card is its former NBC The Apprentice host Donald Trump. —Erik Hayden, The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Feb. 2025

The biggest wild card for the Fed this year is the Trump administration and its policies, such as stiff tariffs, mass deportations, deregulation and slashing the size of the federal government’s workforce. —Bryan Mena, CNN, 14 Feb. 2025

Word History

Etymology

wild card, playing card with arbitrarily determined value

First Known Use

1971, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for wild card

• asgard
• backyard
• barnyard
• blackguard
• bombard
• brickyard
• canard
• churchyard
• coastguard
• courtyard
• debarred
• diehard