card

card

1. (mathematics) cardinality

   Synonyms: #, | |

• enPR: kärd
  • (UK) IPA^(key): /kɑːd/, [kʰɑːd]
  • (US) IPA^(key): /kɑɹd/, [kʰɑɹd]

    • Audio (US):

      (file)

  • (General Australian) IPA^(key): /kaːd/, [kʰäːd]

    • Audio (General Australian):

      (file)

  • (New Zealand) IPA^(key): /kɐːd/, [kʰɐːd]
• Hyphenation: card
• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)d

From Middle English carde (“playing card”), from Old French carte, from Latin charta, from Ancient Greek χάρτης (khártēs, “paper, papyrus”). Doublet of chart.

card (countable and uncountable, plural cards)

1. A playing card.
   • 1963 January 25, “Games: Beating the Dealer”, in Time‎^[1]:

     As each card is played in blackjack, it changes the possibilities for both player and dealer by diminishing the number and the variety of cards that may be dealt.

2. (in the plural) Any game using playing cards; a card game.

   He played cards with his friends.

3. A resource or argument, used to achieve a purpose. (See play the something card.)

   The government played the Orange card to get support for their Ireland policy.

   He accused them of playing the race card.

   • 2007, Luke McNamara, Human Rights Controversies: The Impact of Legal Form, page 138:

     Having adopted civil union as their goal, proponents of the Civil Union Bill were sensitive to the need not to overplay the human rights card, aware that there was a significant degree of resistance in the New Zealand […]

   • 2018 October 17, Drachinifel, 24:24 from the start, in Last Ride of the High Seas Fleet - Battle of Texel 1918‎^[2], archived from the original on 4 August 2022:

     Realizing he is now boxed in on all sides, Hipper decides the only remaining card he has to play is to sell his ships as dearly as possible. The remaining German ships make a hard turn southeast, and drive headlong at the Grand Fleet. It is a brave gesture, but only eight of the ships emerge from the pall of smoke that roughly marks the original German line of advance. Two more emerge minutes later, but that is all.

4. Any flat, normally rectangular piece of stiff paper, plastic, etc.
5. (uncountable) Paper that is thicker and more durable than normal writing or printing paper, but thinner and more flexible than paperboard, used for postcards, playing cards, etc.; card stock.

   Do you have any card? I want to make a poster.

6. (obsolete) A map or chart.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.vii:

     As pilot well expert in perilous waue, / Vpon his card and compas firmes his eye […] .

7. (informal) An amusing or entertaining person, often slightly eccentric.
   • 1918, Siegfried Sassoon, The General:

     "He's a cheery old card," muttered Harry to Jack / As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack. / . . . / But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

   • 2007, Meredith Gran, Octopus Pie #71: Deadpan‎^[3]:

     MAREK: But really the deadpan is key. You can essentially trick people into laughing at nothing.
     EVE: Oh, Marek, you card.

8. A list of scheduled events or of performers or contestants; chiefly used in professional wrestling.

   What's on the card for tonight?

9. (cricket) A tabular presentation of the key statistics of an innings or match: batsmen’s scores and how they were dismissed, extras, total score and bowling figures.
10. (computing) A removable electronic device that may be inserted into a powered electronic device to provide additional capability.

    Synonym: expansion card

    He needed to replace the card his computer used to connect to the internet.

11. (computing) Any of a set of pages or forms that the user can navigate between, and fill with data, in certain user interfaces.
    • 1993, Danny Goodman, The Complete HyperCard 2.2 Handbook, page 198:

      The button will "see" the cursor through a card domain graphic; you can then change button graphics on each card.

    • 2008, Johan Hjelm, Why IPTV?: Interactivity, Technologies, Services, page 13:

      The interaction model of WAP, originally developed for mobile phones to interact with information services in a web-like way, was based on Apple's HyperCard, and instead of pages, the user interacted with a deck of cards, which were interlinked by a scripting language.

    • 2012, Veljko Milutinovic, Frédéric Patricelli, Mastering E-Business Infrastructure, page 329:

      The basic building blocks of WML applications are cards. Cards are equivalent to HTML pages. Just as Web browser can show only one page at a time (except when using frames), a WAP enabled device can also show only one card at a time.

12. A greeting card.

    She gave her neighbors a card congratulating them on their new baby.

13. A business card.

    The realtor gave me her card so I could call if I had any questions about buying a house.

14. (television) A title card or intertitle: a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of the photographed action at various points, generally to convey character dialogue or descriptive narrative material related to the plot.
15. A test card.
16. In formal debating, a verbatim citation used as evidence for a point.
    • 2011, N. Andre Cossette, The Art of Debate: 12th Edition, page 123:

      You can make most theory answers without cards, but some cards do exist which specifically criticize kritiks on a theoretical basis.

17. (dated) A published note, containing a brief statement, explanation, request, expression of thanks, etc.

    to put a card in the newspapers

18. (dated) A printed programme.
19. (dated, figurative, by extension) An attraction or inducement.

    This will be a good card for the last day of the fair.

20. (nautical) Short for compass card.
    • 1594, Richard Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 1.2.5, page 153 (Everyman edition, vol. 1):

      "The Lord possessed me [= Wisdom] in the beginning of his way, even before his works of old was I set up;" that law, which hath been the pattern to make, and is the card to guide the world by

    • c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii]:

      All the quarters that they know / I' the shipman's card.

21. (weaving) A perforated pasteboard or sheet-metal plate for warp threads, making part of the Jacquard apparatus of a loom.
22. (graph theory) A graph formed from a given graph by deleting one vertex.

    Coordinate term: deck

23. An indicator card.

• (playing cards): court card
• (piece of plastic): affinity card, credit card, debit card

Suits in English · suits (see also: cards, playing cards) (layout · text)
hearts	diamonds	spades	clubs

card (third-person singular simple present cards, present participle carding, simple past and past participle carded)

1. (transitive, US) To check IDs, especially against a minimum age requirement.

   They have to card anybody who looks 21 or younger.

   I heard you don't get carded at the other liquor store.

   • 1989, Chris Matheson, Ed Solomon, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (motion picture):

     Ted (Keanu Reeves): Whoa. He didn't even card us, dude. / Bill (Alex Winter): Yeah, we have to remember this place.

2. (dated) To play cards.
3. (transitive, golf) To make (a stated score), as recorded on a scoring card.

   McIlroy carded a stellar nine-under-par 61 in the final round.

From Middle English carde, Old French carde, from Old Occitan carda, deverbal from cardar, from Late Latin *carito, from Latin carō (“to comb with a card”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut”).

card (countable and uncountable, plural cards)

1. (uncountable, dated) Material with embedded short wire bristles.
2. (dated, textiles) A comb- or brush-like device or tool to raise the nap on a fabric.
3. (textiles) A hand-held tool formed similarly to a hairbrush but with bristles of wire or other rigid material. It is used principally with raw cotton, wool, hair, or other natural fibers to prepare these materials for spinning into yarn or thread on a spinning wheel, with a whorl or other hand-held spindle. The card serves to untangle, clean, remove debris from, and lay the fibers straight.
4. (dated, textiles) A machine for disentangling the fibres of wool prior to spinning.
5. A roll or sliver of fibre (as of wool) delivered from a carding machine.

From Middle English carden, from Old French carder, from carde (“cotton card”); see Etymology 2 for more.

card (third-person singular simple present cards, present participle carding, simple past and past participle carded)

1. (textiles) To use a carding device to disentangle the fibres of wool prior to spinning.
   • 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 252:

     "Isn't that true, Bertha? " asked the smith. "Yes, every word of it, my lad," said Mother Bertha, who was sitting near the hearth carding.

2. To scrape or tear someone’s flesh using a metal comb, as a form of torture.
3. (transitive) To comb with a card; to cleanse or disentangle by carding.

   to card a horse

   • 1757, John Dyer, The Fleece:

     the carded wool, he says,
     Is smoothly lapp'd around those cylinders

4. (obsolete, transitive, figuratively) To clean or clear, as if by using a card.
   • 1612, Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Thomas Shelton, Don Quixote:

     It is necessary that this book carded and purged of certain base things.

5. (obsolete, transitive) To mix or mingle, as with an inferior or weaker article.
   • 1592, Robert Greene, A Quip for an Upstart Courtier:

     that card your beer, if you see your guests begin to be drunk, half small and half strong

• carding-comb

card (plural cards)

1. Abbreviation of cardinal (“songbird”).

card (plural cards)

1. Obsolete form of chard.

• “card”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “card”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “card”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
• “card” (US) / “card” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.
• “card”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• DARC, CADR, Drac, RdAc, cadr

Inherited from Latin carduus.

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic) [ˈkart]
• IPA^(key): (Valencia) [ˈkaɾt]
• Rhymes: -aɾt
• Homophone: kart

card m (plural cards)

1. thistle

• carlet

• “card” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

Unadapted borrowing from English card, from Middle English carde, from Old French carte, from Latin charta, from Ancient Greek χάρτης (khártēs). Doublet of carta.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkard/
• Rhymes: -ard
• Hyphenation: càrd

card f (invariable)

1. card (identification, financial, SIM etc., but not playing card)

• scheda

Borrowed from English card. Doublet of carte, cartă, hârtie, and hartă.

card n (plural carduri)

1. card (a payment, gift, loyalty, or memory card)

• cartelă