in the ~ stakes (the meaning of the stakes)

Question

Beckham was high in the popularity stakes.

She was determined to win in the fashion stakes.

Is the 'in the ~ stakes' phrase an idiom ?

What's the meaning of the stakes here?

Answer 1

One meaning of the word "stake" is "the money that a gambler bets in a game of chance". If the gambler loses, the winner takes his stake. If the gambler wins, he takes back his stake and takes everyone else's stake as well.

There are many words and phrases with "stake" in them that are related to this meaning:

• A "low-stakes" game is a game where the bets are very small, so it doesn't matter much if you win or lose.
• A "high-stakes" game is a game where the bets are very large. When "the stakes are high", it is very good to win, and very bad to lose.
• If you "have a stake in" a game, you care about the outcome, because it will affect you personally.
• If some thing (such as a pile of money) is "at stake", that means you might lose it.
• When you "raise the stakes" of a game, you are deliberately turning a "low-stakes" game into a "high-stakes" game.

While their original meanings come from gambling, these words and phrases are now used in a metaphorical sense. They can describe any situation where a person could succeed or fail.

"in the [X] stakes" is not an idiom that I was personally familiar with. (Perhaps it is less common in the U.S. than elsewhere.) "The stakes" seems to refer to the entire "game" or "contest" that a person may win or lose. This might be a shortened version of "stakes race", which is a particular kind of horse race. But I am not sure about that. In any case, you could replace "in the [X] stakes" with "in the [X] contest" and the meaning would be similar.

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For completeness, I will include some dictionary definitions here.

in the (something) stakes

in regard to having a large or adequate amount of some characteristic or trait.

He's an incredibly talented artist, but there's quite a bit lacking in the human decency stakes.

For my money, they have the single best operating system of any phone on the market, but they're so far behind in the popularity stakes with consumers that there's no way they can stay competitive

_{Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2022 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.}

in the... stakes

used to say how much of a particular quality a person has, as if they were in a competition in which some people are more successful than others

John doesn’t do too well in the personality stakes.

_{Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017}

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/in+the...+stakes

the beauty, popularity, etc. stakes

a situation where someone is judged on how much of a particular quality they have

The prime minister is not very high in the popularity stakes (= he is not very popular) at the moment.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/stake