wild card vs wildcard

wild card

noun
  • A competitor or team that is allowed to compete in a tournament despite not reaching the normal standards to qualify for inclusion. 

  • A card that can be assigned any value or used to substitute for any needed card. 

wildcard

noun
  • A character that takes the place of any other character or string that is not known or specified. 

  • An element, often deliberately concealed, which is withheld for contingency. 

  • An uncontrolled or unpredictable element. 

How often have the words wild card and wildcard occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )