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  What it means

  “He who plays diamonds will lose for sure.” A rhyming warning from card-playing culture: certain choices lead inevitably to loss. More broadly, reckless gambling or risky moves end badly.

  Vocabulary

  • grać — to play
  • karo — diamonds (card suit)
  • przegrać — to lose
  • zaro — for sure, certainly (dialectal/rhyming form of 'zaraz' or 'na pewno')

  Grammar note

  'Kto … przegra' is a conditional correlative: 'whoever plays … will lose'. The rhyme 'karo / zaro' gives it a memorable folk quality.

  Cultural context

  Originates in Polish card-game culture. 'Zaro' is a dialectal or rhyming variant used purely for the rhyme with 'karo'.

  Intermediate

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