An ace was originally the side of a dice marked with one spot. The word comes from Latin as, meaning ‘unit’. Since an ace is the card with the highest value in many card games, the word often suggests a sense of excellence.
An ace was also a wartime fighter pilot who brought down many aircraft, and is now anyone who excels at something. In tennis an ace is a service that your opponent is unable to reach, and in golf it is a hole in one.
If you have an ace up your sleeve (or in American English – an ace in the hole) you have a secret resource ready to use when you need it. A cheating card player might well hide an ace up their sleeve to use at an opprtune moment. To hold all the aces is to hve all the advantages, again from the idea of a card game: a player holding all four aces in their hand is likely to be in a winning position.
A 1951 movie starring Kirk Douglas was titled Ace in The Hole – about a frustrated former big-city journalist now stuck working for an Albuquerque newspaper exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to rekindle his career, but the situation quickly escalates into an out-of-control circus.
To be within an ace of doing something is to be in the verge of doing it. This comes from the idea of an ace being a single spot on a playing card and hence a tine amount.
In Australia, New Xealand and South Africa, to be on your ace is to be on your own.
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