in the cards

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

an idiom meaning likely to happen or seemingly destined by circumstances to occur, derived from the practice of cartomancy — fortune-telling using playing cards or tarot — where the cards laid out in a reading were understood to reveal what fate had already determined; when something is in the cards it is not merely probable but seems written into the logic of the situation, as if the outcome has already been decided by forces larger than the immediate participants; the phrase carries a fatalistic undertone suggesting that the outcome in question is difficult or impossible to prevent, and it is often used in retrospect to describe events that seemed inevitable in hindsight even if they were uncertain in prospect; it bridges the idioms of luck and inevitability, acknowledging probability while gesturing toward a sense of pre-determination