Postcard

How to spell postcard

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce postcard

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does postcard mean?

1. nounA rectangular card, often printed with a picture on one side, sent by mail without an envelope.

Postcard in a sentence

• She mailed a postcard from the coast on the first day of the trip.

• The gift shop sold a glossy postcard of the cathedral for one pound.

Where does postcard come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is a compound formed in English from two older borrowings. The first element, 'post', comes from the Latin positus, the past participle of ponere meaning 'to place' or 'to set down', which passed into English through French and Italian to describe the relay stations where mail was 'placed' and exchanged along a route. The second element, 'card', derives from the Latin charta, meaning 'a leaf of papyrus' or 'paper', which reached English through Old French as 'carte'. The two were joined in the later nineteenth century, after postal services in Europe began issuing plain, stamped cards for short messages around the 1860s and 1870s. The word is thoroughly transparent in spelling, since each half is spelled exactly as it sounds, with the small trap being the silent 't' in 'post' carrying through into the compound.

How the word is built

• post (from postal, the mail system)
• card (a stiff piece of paper)