In today’s society, we tend to label everything that’s great – especially in a world dominated by sports nuts – as a ‘grand slam’. We even have a world-spanning online gambling event that runs under the name Grand Slam of Slots 2. The ‘2’ implies the most straightforward of explanations: it’s the second time only that this event has run, and it has done so with incredible success.

Back to the question: what is a ‘grand slam’?

The original explanation comes from contract bridge, a card game that works with what is called ‘trick-taking’. Without going into the actual game of bridge, a grand slam in bridge implies that all the tricks in hand were employed in order to achieve victory. Of course, the most obvious place where the term ‘grand slam’ gets used these days is in sporting events, such as golf, baseball, tennis, rugby and Formula One racing.

Grand Slam also applies to the entertainment scene (and not just in casino gaming). At least two movies, released in 1967 and 1978 respectively, have carried this title, while three music albums have also made use of the name. On a less exciting level, a Grand Slam is also a bomb, which is a much larger version of what is called a Tallboy bunker buster. In case that description makes no immediate sense, a bunker buster bomb is the kind of explosive device that is used to dislodge heavily entrenched targets, say, from a bunker or an underground safety location. Nasty, if you happen to be stuck in a bunker.

Needless to say, today’s grand slam elements are far more forgiving and less aggressive than dropping bombs on pernicious targets, unless you mean the big prize money you can win in a sporting events, or the casino-focused Grand Slam of Slots 2. Names have a strange habit of becoming something else, especially if it rolls off the tongue and describes something delightful. Maybe it’s time to find a useful way to refer to blogging as ‘grand-slamming’? Anyone?