Shemmy is British slang for chemin de fer — the casino card game in the baccarat family, popular in European gambling circles in the mid-20th century and strongly associated with James Bond fiction and the upper-class gambling world. The shortening follows the classic British pattern of clipping foreign words to more pronounceable informal versions. The register is informal and nostalgic; 'shemmy' sounds like the kind of thing someone says in a private members' club.
They found a table running shemmy in the back room and played until the small hours.
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(UK, slang) (card game).
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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