card

card

1. (mathematics) cardinality

• (cardinality): #, |·|

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

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /kaːd/, [kʰäːd]
• (General New Zealand) IPA^(key): /kɐːd/, [kʰɐːd]

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• 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”).

card (countable and uncountable, plural cards)

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

   He played cards with his friends.

3. A resource or an argument, used to achieve a purpose.

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

   He accused them of playing the race card.

4. Any flat, normally rectangular piece of stiff paper, plastic etc.
5. (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 [...].

6. (informal) An amusing or entertaining person, often slightly eccentrically so.[1]
   • 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

     MAREK: But really the deadpan is key. You can essentially trick people into laughing at nothing.

     EVE: Oh, Marek, you card.

7. A list of scheduled events or of performers or contestants.

   What’s on the card for tonight?

8. (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.
9. (computing) A removable electronic device that may be inserted into a powered electronic device to provide additional capability.

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

10. A greeting card.

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

11. A business card.

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

12. (television) Title card / 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.
13. A test card.
14. (dated) A published note, containing a brief statement, explanation, request, expression of thanks, etc.

    to put a card in the newspapers

15. (dated) A printed programme.
16. (dated, figuratively, by extension) An attraction or inducement.

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

17. A paper on which the points of the compass are marked; the dial or face of the mariner's compass.
    • Shakespeare

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

18. (weaving) A perforated pasteboard or sheet-metal plate for warp threads, making part of the Jacquard apparatus of a loom.
19. An indicator card.

• Pitcairn-Norfolk: kaad
• → Bengali: কার্ড (karḍ)
• → Burmese: ကတ် (kat)
• → Chinese: 卡 (kǎ)
• → Hausa: kati
• → Hindi: कार्ड (kārḍ)
• → Gujarati: કાર્ડ (kārḍ)
• → Japanese: カード (kādo)
• → Korean: 카드 (kadeu)
• → Malay: kad
• → Pashto: کارډ‎‎ (kārḍ)
• → Sinhalese: කාඩ් (kāḍ)
• → Swahili: kadi
• → Tagalog: kard
• → Urdu: کارڈ‎ (kārḍ)

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

1. (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.

2. (dated) To play cards.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Johnson to this entry?)

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

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.
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

   • (Can we find and add a quotation of Dyer to this entry?)
4. (obsolete, transitive, figuratively) To clean or clear, as if by using a card.
   • (Can we date this quote?) T. Shelton

     This book [must] be carded and purged.

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

From cardinal

card (plural cards)

1. Abbreviation of cardinal. (songbird)

• DARC, Drac, cadr

From Latin carduus.

• (Balearic, Valencian) IPA^(key): /ˈkaɾt/
• (Central) IPA^(key): /ˈkart/

• Rhymes: -art

card m (plural cards)

1. thistle

Borrowed from English card.

• IPA^(key): [kard̪]

card m (invariable)

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

• scheda