Playing Card Terminology Glossary

Brick a carton of 12 decks.  These can be popular with card sellers.  A half-brick holds 6 decks.

Bridge Size cards conventional standard cards tend to come in a narrower size (‘Bridge’) and a broader size (‘Poker’).  Sizes vary by manufacturer but the bridge cards are typically around 2¼” x 3¼ ”.

Carat Case is the name for high-end plastic card boxes.  Some of the contemporary card designers have added printing on these cases to great effect.

Cello/ Cellophane wrapper modern cards usually have a cellophane wrapper inside the card case, tightly wrapping the cards.  This becomes important for people who are playing for money: if the cards are seen to be taken from a sealed box and then taken out of the cellophane, this gives players a strong assurance that the cards are ‘honest’.  For further security, those that visited USPC during our last Convention saw – but were not allowed into - a specially segregated area for printing casino decks.

Corner Index an index placed at the card corner.  Samuel Hart ‘Saladee’s patent’ of 1864 was the first deck to have corner indices.  They are now standard.

Court Cards Jack, Queen, King.

Diptych come from ancient fine art, a diptych being  a hinged pair of panels seen together.  Generally it is a now any pair of images intended to be viewed as one.  The Australian single-card collectors (and possibly others) call these put-‘togethers’.

Double-ended Most modern standard cards look the same if you rotate them 180˚ to swap ends.  Hence the description ‘double ended’.  Duplex is a fancier term for double-ended.

Finish The card finish is the key element in making them slide smoothly, which is important for players, cardists and magicians.  The finish is also a barrier against water.  The old finish was a glaze or sizing (a term used by artists in the preparation of paper).  From the 19th century, different surfaces were experimented with: linen finish, pneumatic and so on.  These reduce contact area and help a layer of air keep the cards apart.

Foil/ Foiling a recent technique where metallic foil decoration is used to in the design of boxes or backs.  Lotrek has pioneered foiling on the fronts, eg his 2017 Diamond Award winner ‘Golden Oath’.

Full-length the older style of cards with court cards standing up (also called ‘single-ended’).

Gaff a card or set of cards that has been altered - usually for magic tricks.

Ganjifa are the traditional circular cards of India. I am very fond of them – just look at that picture!

Half brick a carton of 6 decks (see brick)

Illustrated or pictorial cards are non-standard and were very popular in the 18th Century Europe.  All 52 cards can be used like a modern story-board to tell a story from history (eg. The Spanish Armada above) or to illustrate a theme (eg Cries of London).

Index usually a digit (1-10) or letter (J Q K) plus a suit sign but sometimes a picture.  The index is sometimes the only identification on the card and provides much easier identification for card players.

Indices plural of index.

Knave older term for the Jack.

Label Seal contemporary tuck cases are often sealed with a small stamp.  This can be decorative but it mainly serves as a security assurance – see the entry for ‘cello/ cellophane’.

Non-standard any deck or single card that does not conform to a standard pattern.   See an example shown above the entry for ‘index’.

Number Cards are 1-10 i.e. anything but the courts.

Numerals an older term for number cards.

Pattern is a somewhat academic term, but it does become useful for following the development of different designs.  The term denotes an accepted standard design that persisted in a country, region or sometimes just one town over a period of time.  Standards can and usually do evolve slowly over time (except in France which has a legal standard!).

Pictures, Picture cards Jack, Queen, King.

Pip, Pips the suit signs on cards and also a name for the number cards of each suit.

Poker Size cards conventional standard cards tend to come in a narrower size (‘Bridge’) and a broader size (‘Poker’).  Sizes vary by manufacturer but the bridge cards are typically around 2½  ” x 3¼ ”.

Repurposed cards - the name given when cards are adapted for a new use – it could be something as simple as folding a card up to fix a wobbly table.  For centuries, simple card was not a household item.  Cards were re-made as calling-cards, invitations to, all sorts of events , library files, advertisements etc. hundreds of uses now being known.   Very often the second use is the sole reason for the survival of old cards.  This is an important category!

Secondary use cards - same as ‘repurposed’.

Security strip a band that wraps around a cellophane wrapper for ease of removal (this will remind some people of old cigarette wrapping).  Part of the ‘no-tampering’ assurance (see cello/cellophane).

Single-ended the older style of cards in which the court cards are portrayed standing up.  These were replaced by double-ended cards in the 19th Century.

Standard cards this is a term that is readily easy to understand but difficult to pin down.  These are the regular cards used by card players for games, with more-or-less understood design features (such as a King holding a sword and facing left), but the details can vary somewhat between manufacturers and evolve over time.  Different standards have evolved in different regions, sometimes at the level of single towns, sometimes across many countries.  For the level of variety, see ‘Suit Sytems’.

Stock the physical card material, as in “these cards were made with our finest stock”.  The stock really does make an important difference, most obviously from cheap grey and rough cards to smooth luxury cards.  Flexibility and friction are also very important to magicians and cardists (and card throwers).

Suit Systems the suits seen in American decks are properly called ‘French suits’ as they originated in France.  There are other systems: German cards have Leaves, Hearts, Bells and Acorns.  The four symbols together make the suit system.  Possibly the earliest is ‘Spanish’ (my term, you’ll see ‘Latin’, ‘Italian’ etc – bear in mind that the country boundaries have changed extensively). These are found in Italy, Spain, Portugal and much of South America, and the suits are Swords, Coins, Cups and Batons.

Symmetrical cards were designed in the late 1990s and gained a brief popularity.  The traditional A♠ is not symmetrical top to bottom, and this leads to the possibility of cheating, or at least bending the rules.  It is particularly useful in bridge, or any game with a partner or team.  It could be agreed in advance that playing any card upside down (as viewed by the player placing it on the table) would be a message to the partner (e.g. don’t lead a card in this suit). In practice they cause errors and are not popular.

Tax ace Old English packs carried a tax on the Ace of Spades.  The Ace had elaborate printing that was difficult to forge.  These ‘tax aces’ are the reason why the Ace of Spades took on a special, fancy design.

Tax Stamp In the past, and in many countries, cards were taxed.  This was “to discourage gambling”, but really this is just another example in the long tradition of the state getting money out of the individual any way it can.

Telescopic case a two-part box with an inner card sleeve enclosed on five sides, open at the top, and an outer sleeve enclosed on five sides and open at the bottom.  So-called as the movement of the two pieces resembles the action of a classic telescope.

Transformation cards are cards in which the pips have been incorporated so as to appear naturally in an artistic scene.  These are best understood by seeing some examples (above).  There are two sorts: regular transformation cards are more or less mass-produced while ‘hand-drawn transformations are literally added onto the cards by the artist – so these are always unique.  Both types are popular and collectable (and therefore equally expensive!)

Tuck or Tuck Case the most common modern package, a box with a folding top that tucks in.

Uncut Sheet typically, cards are printed as one full set on a large sheet of card.  Before machinery, they would be printed in smaller groups.  In either case, this single page is an ‘uncut sheet’. The example shown would also be described as ‘uncoloured’. On the older cards, colours were added by hand to a page like this (using stencils).

Woodblock was the technology used for printing the early court cards only beginning to be replaced in the 1830s.  Wooden blocks were cut away leaving just the outlines for the court card pictures, ready for printing.  The colours and the pip signs were added later by hand using stencils (one for each colour).

Wrapper generally refers to any paper wrapper for a set of cards.  More specifically, in many countries the wrapper was taxed and made of flimsy paper which tore easily.  This prevented a second tax-free sale.