Skip to main content
visiting card

visiting card

1 6.4
A small card with a person's name and sometimes address left to announce their visit
  • noun
  • /ˈvɪzɪtɪŋ kɑrd/
  • Archaic
translation icon : tarjeta de visita
  • When meeting new clients, I always make sure to carry my visiting card to share my contact information.

Examples

  • The harbormaster reread the king's visiting card, then asked,

    Fiction book (1999)
  • If you will excuse us, we forgot our visiting cards.

  • And most importantly, he would have visiting cards printed saying "Chairman of the Association of Doctors."

    Fiction book (1997)
  • "Have gone to Ithaca," he writes simply on his visiting card to a relative.

    Academic text (2003)
  • Back home, they would await the response of the Secretary of the Dalston Association to their modest visiting card.

    Fiction book (1998)
  • To both men, she is no more than what is written on her visiting card, a name that circulates from hotel registry to hotel registry.

    Academic text (2018)
  • As soon as I'm quite sure of the worst... I'II send you a visiting card with a bIack cross on it... and then you'II know that decay and destruction... have set in.

  • The man who was to be given a boat read the visiting card, which bore the word king underneath the king's name, and these were the words the king had written as he rested the card on the cleaning woman's shoulder.

    Fiction book (1999)
  • If Pugh's photographic visiting cards are indeed the cartes de visite developed five years earlier by the Frenchman A. A. Disderi, his letter to Humphrey's Journal is perhaps the earliest published mention of the format in the United States.

    Academic text (2008)
  • He handed her his visiting card as a polite gesture after their brief encounter.

Synonyms

calling card
vsvisiting card
  • Archaic
4 6.0

A small card with a person's name left to show they visited

is left simply to announce presence or as a token of a visit

Surface Forms

visiting card singular

Morphology

visiting + card

The meaning 'a small card left when visiting or to announce one's presence' is directly inferable from combining 'visiting' (the act of going to see someone) with 'card' (a small card). This compositional, descriptive relation is common cross-linguistically and follows normal noun-modifier patterns, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would likely understand it.

Etymology

Visiting card comes from an old custom: when someone visited a home they left a small card with their name so the family would know who had called. That's why a visiting card is a small card used 'to announce one's presence' or to show you visited.