phone card
6
2.1
- noun
- /foʊn kɑrd/
- Archaic
:
tarjeta telefónica
- Before traveling abroad, I always purchase a phone card to avoid high roaming charges.
- prepaid phone card
- buy phone cards
- sell phone cards
So you'd think you'd always want to have this cell phone card.
- So you'd think you'd always want to have this cell phone card.
Examples
-
Get a prepaid phone card today to call your loved ones around the world and tell them you love them.
Blog text (5) -
Lamar used a phone card to call her.
Fiction book (1999) -
Next time get a phone card.
-
I got a phone card.
-
Send him a phone card.
-
Yeah, it's a phone card.
-
Campaign provides phone cards to soldiers
Blog text (27) -
A $5 donation will provide a service member with a phone card.
Blog text (27) -
She got out her phone card and called the embassy.
Fiction book (1998) -
A prepaid phone card helps make these experiences cheaper, especially when calling internationally.
Blog text (5)
Synonyms
4
3.9
A prepaid card used to pay for phone calls from public phones
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is a straightforward composition of 'phone' (telephone) + 'card' (a small payment/ID item): a card used for telephone calls, so a learner who knows both words can infer its purpose. This noun–noun compounding is common cross-linguistically and follows transparent, predictable composition patterns, making it readily understandable at B1.
Etymology
Phone card comes from the simple image of a small card that holds money or minutes for a phone. People would buy the card and use it in public phones, so it became the name for 'a card you pay for before using to make telephone calls'.