postcard

US/ˈpoʊstˌkɑɹd/

nounB1Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,079 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: postcards

A postcard is the picture card you send from holidays with two lines of greetings. Send a postcard, a seaside postcard, write the postcard.

It is open by design, so anybody handling it can read it — which is why the law once limited what could be written on one and why the messages are so short and so cheerful. Deltiology is the collecting of them, and it is a large hobby.

Definitions of postcard

1nounpostcardA card with a picture, sent by post without an envelope.B1
“We sent my grandparents a postcard from the beach with a picture of the harbour.”

postcard is a card.

Where it comes from

From post + card.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in News & Communication

Practise this word

postcard in the wild

In some places, one can send a postcard for a lower fee than a letter.
Postcard
Production of postcards blossomed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Postcard
E-card is an electronic postcard or greeting card, with the primary difference being that it is created using digital media instead of paper or other traditional materials.
E-card
Members can get details of other randomly selected members to send a postcard to, then receive cards from other random members.
Postcrossing
As of March 2026, Postcrossing had more than 805,000 members in 207 countries and territories, and over 85 million registered postcards had been exchanged.
Postcrossing

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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