poker: English has two words poker. The earlier, poker for a fire [16], is simply the agent noun formed from poke [14], a verb borrowed from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German poken ‘thrust, hit’. The card-game name [19] originated in the USA, but it is not clear where it came from: one suggestion is that it is connected with German pochen ‘brag’. [poker etymology, poker origin, 英语词源]