cards

1. a piece of thick, stiff paper or thin pasteboard, in particular one used for writing or printing on.

   some notes jotted down on a card

   a piece of card

2. a small rectangular piece of plastic containing personal data in a machine-readable form and used to obtain cash or credit or to pay for a phone call, gain entry to a room or building, etc.

   your card cannot be used to withdraw more than your daily limit from cash machines

   she paid for the goods with her card

3. a playing card.

   a pack of cards

4. short for expansion card.
5. documents relating to an employee, especially for tax and national insurance, held by the employer.
6. a programme of events at a race meeting.

   a nine-race card

7. a person regarded as odd or amusing.

   He laughed: ‘You're a card, you know’

1. write (something) on a card, especially for indexing.
2. check the identity card of (someone), in particular as evidence of legal drinking age.

   we were carded at the entrance to the club

3. (of an amateur athlete) be in receipt of government funding to pursue training.

   in 1986–7 all carded athletes received a basic $450 monthly allowance

late Middle English (in sense 3 of the noun): from Old French carte, from Latin carta, charta, from Greek khartēs ‘papyrus leaf’.

1. comb and clean (raw wool, hemp fibres, or similar material) with a sharp-toothed instrument in order to disentangle the fibres before spinning.

   the wool from the sheep was carded and spun

plural noun

a toothed implement or machine for carding wool.

late Middle English: from Old French carde, from Provençal carda, from cardar ‘tease, comb’, based on Latin carere ‘to card’.