There is some magic in the word Casino; or at least, some smell of money and dreams (unfortunately, mostly broken dreams’ rotten smell).
At first thought it seems logical the origin of the word to be related to cash or checkout/cash desk. But the etymology appears to have quite different roots. The word casino comes from the Italian Casa – a pleasure-house, or a vacation/summer house, from the Latin casa – cottage.
The first recorded usage in the English language comes from 1789, in the meaning of a public room or club designed for social meetings and dancing. And it was the British diarist and patron of arts Hester Lynch Thrale, later known under her Italian husband’s family name Piozzi, to describe her impressions from a gondola ride along the Grand Canal in Venice in her travel book: “The nightly rendezvous, the coffee-house, and casino….. (which enhance the beauty of the Grand Canal)”.
Unfortunately by the time of her visit, the first known European gambling house – The Ridotto in Venice, which opened up in 1638 to provide control gambling during the carnival festivity, was already closed for over a decade.
It is unclear whether Mrs. Piozzi referred to a gambling house or a Venetian brothel, but it is a curious fact that in modern-day Italian, the term casino refers to the second, while the gambling house is spelled casinò with an accent.
In one or another meaning of the word, casinos were designed for entertainment and were spreading across Europe, as a 1836 Europe travel book highlights their role:”In all the principal German towns, Societies corresponding nearly with a London club, and known by such names as the Casino…….or the like, are to be found.”
The first documented record of the word casino in the English language – in the clear meaning of a gambling house – comes again from Venice but 62 years later. The Victorian writer and art critic John Ruskin traveled to Venice with his wife in an attempt to define the Victorian aesthetic ideal. And appears the ideal had a lot to do with gambling, as he writes in a letter to home in 1851 that: “He lost in gambling at Chamouni to the Master of the Casino 25,000 francs.”
