Carte
name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A bill of fare; a menu.
- 2 Alternative form of quarte. alt-of, alternative, countable, uncountable
- 3 a list of dishes available at a restaurant wordnet
- 4 A visiting card. dated
""He only says she is Laura Somerset, and he sends me her carte; here it is." Now this was in the early days of cartes, and the soft ivory finish and delicate tinting of the cartes that now are taken, were unknown."
- 5 A carte de visite (small collectible photograph of a famous person). historical
"Celebrity cartes, and photographic portraits more generally, were valued in Victorian culture for their much-lauded ability to render the sitter as he or she really was."
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- 6 A playing card. Scotland, dated
"We’ll take a dram for luck, and as soon as this handless man of mine has the collops ready, we’ll dine and take a hand at the cartes as gentlemen should."
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"When a police officer pulls you over for driving in the fast lane, does he have carte blanche to search your cell phone, too?"
Etymology
Borrowed from French carte, from Latin charta. Doublet of card and chart.
Related phrases
More for "carte"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.