Late 17th century; earliest use found in Joseph Moxon (1627–1691), printer and globe maker. From Dutch †rondse handle used to operate a winch connected to the spit of a hand-printing press; also ronds, rons), probably from rond + a suffix of uncertain origin.

Mid 19th century; earliest use found in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. Probably from French rams, denoting a card game for three to five players in which the object is to take five tricks as quickly as possible or its apparent etymon German Ramsch, (chiefly regional: Switzerland) †Rams, (regional: Carinthia) †Rans Ramsch, although this is apparently first attested later in the relevant sense (1837 or earlier in a Swiss (Appenzell) source denoting a card game with unspecified rules, 1859 or earlier (implied in the verb †ransen) denoting a card game played in the Lesach valley in Carinthia, a southern province of Austria, in which the object is to win five tricks as quickly as possible); for the later (and now main) sense of the German word, denoting a trick-avoiding game, as well as for the ulterior etymology see Ramsch.

Mid 19th century. From rounce.