tarot

Tarot is a pack of picture cards used to tell fortunes. A tarot reading, tarot cards, read the tarot.

A standard pack has seventy-eight cards: the twenty-two Major Arcana, with names like the Fool and the Tower, and fifty-six Minor Arcana in four suits. Tarot began in fifteenth-century Italy as a card game and was only used for divination from about the eighteenth century, which surprises most people. It is still played as a game in France. Note the pronunciation, TARR-oh, with a silent t at the end.