• enPR: wĭst, IPA: /wɪst/ or enPR: hwĭst, IPA: /ʍɪst/ (in Scottish English and some English accents)

Alteration of whisk, perhaps so called from the notion of “whisking” up cards after each trick.

whist

1. Any of several four-player card games, similar to bridge.
2. A session of playing this card game.

• French: whist
• German: Whist
• Russian: вист

From Middle English whist, possibly onomatopoeic.

1. Alternative spelling of whisht. Silence!, quiet!, hush!, shhh!, shush!

whist (whists, present participle whisting; simple past and past participle whisted)

1. (transitive, rare) To hush or shush; to still.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC ↗:

     o was the Titaness put downe and whist

2. (intransitive, rare) To become silent.
   • 1557 July 10, Virgil, “The Fowrth Boke of Virgiles Aenæis”, in Henry [Howard, Earl] of Surrey, transl., edited by William Bolland, Certain Bokes of Virgiles Aenaeis, Turned into English Meter ([Roxburghe Club Publications; I]), London: […] A[braham] J[ohn] Valpy, […], published 1814, →OCLC ↗:

     The fields whist, beasts, and fowls of divers bue

whist

1. (rare) Silent, hushed.
   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC ↗, [Act I, scene ii]:

     Come unto these yellow sands, / And then take hands: / Courtsied when you have and kiss'd / The wild waves whist, / Foot it featly here and there; / And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear. […]