ace
Definitions
General English
- noun a playing card with one spot
- noun someone who is excellent at doing something
- noun a service in tennis which the opponent cannot return
Economics
(written as ACE)
Automated Commercial Environment- acronym forAutomated Commercial Environment
(written as ACE)
- ACE is an online system developed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to process international trade.
Medical
- noun
(written as ACE)
an enzyme that increases blood pressure
Slang
- adjective excellent, first class. Used extensively since the late 1950s in the USA, since the mid-1960s in Australia, and by the 1970s, especially by teenagers, in Britain. The origin of the term is obviously in the highest value playing card, the meaning now having been extended from ‘best’ to ‘smartest’, ‘cleverest’, etc.
- noun a best friend or good person. Used by males to other males, usually as a greeting or a term of endearment. In this sense the term probably spread from black American street gangs in the 1950s to working-class whites in the USA, Australia and, to a lesser extent, Britain.
- verb to succeed, win or score very highly
Sports
- noun someone who is outstandingly good at a sport
Food
- acronym forangiotensin-converting enzyme
(written as ACE)
Military
- acronym forAllied Command Europe
(written as ACE)
- acronym forarmoured combat earthmover
(written as ACE)
- noun the name for Allied Command Operations until 2003.
- noun an American-designed armoured bulldozer.
Origin & History of “ace”
Ace comes
from the
name of a
small ancient Roman
coin, the
as (
which may
have been of Etruscan
origin). As
well as denoting the coin, Latin
as stood for ‘one’ or ‘unity’, and it was as the ‘score of one at dice’
that it
first entered
English.
