Grand slam

The term Grand Slam has a very precise meaning - which is different in different contexts. The root meaning is from the card game of Whist, where a 'slam' is winning all the tricks in a deal. This was adopted in Whist's descendants Bridge-Whist, Auction Bridge and the current form of the game, Contract Bridge, where a grand slam is bidding and then winning all the tricks in a deal. (A small, [or Little, or Minor] slam is bidding and winning all but one of the thirteen tricks.) From the earliest days (in the nineteenth century, where it is recorded in Hoyle, 1814), the term has been used figuratively and in transferred senses.

• as a (military) all-out assault;
  • - and this sense ia applied figuratively to all sorts of confrontations;
    • in baseball, a 'grand slam' is achieved when a home run is hit with runners on all bases, leading to a maximum possible score of 4.
• in many other sports and games, to indicate winning a particular set of prestigious tournaments etc in a given year:
  • in golf,
  • in Rugby Union
  • in tennis