Come up or turn up trumps

Origin of: Come up or turn up trumps

Come up or turn up trumps

Come through in a triumphant, winning way derives from playing cards where trumps are a suit of cards designated as having a higher value than other suits in various card games. Therefore, coming up or turning up trumps, first cited in the early 1600s, became synonymous with winning. The word trump itself is an alternative form, a corruption really, of the word triumph and dates from the early 1500s. It derives from a once-popular card game called Triumph in which after the deal, the next card that was turned over from the remaining deck, was designated the triumph suit, which eventually became the trump suit.