card catalog

noun

: a catalog (as of books) in which the entries are arranged systematically on cards

Examples of card catalog in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web The fabled Joan Rivers card catalog of jokes is being donated to the National Comedy Center. Jason Zinoman, New York Times, 26 Oct. 2023 The museum is in the planning stages of an interactive exhibition that will center on Joan Rivers’s card catalog of jokes and include material covering a vast swath of comedy history, from the 1950s to 2015. Jason Zinoman, New York Times, 8 June 2023 Upon check-in, the host will escort the guests behind a curtain, take their phones and lock them in a vintage card catalog cabinet. Bahar Anooshahr, The Arizona Republic, 7 Feb. 2023 Vintage stuff covers my century-old farmhouse, from the card catalog table in the living room to the tennis racquets on the wall of the mudroom to the potato chip tin in the kitchen. Laura Johnston, cleveland, 2 July 2022 To launch it, said Rikki Longino, the City Library’s garden coordinator, the library’s garden staff performed a little skit in the auditorium using the old-fashioned wooden card catalog that is now used to stock seeds. Stefene Russell, The Salt Lake Tribune, 24 Apr. 2022 The seed packets are stored in card catalog cabinets. Joanne Kempinger Demski, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 17 Mar. 2022 Most seed libraries, however, are in public libraries of the book persuasion, generally open during the hours the library is open, with seeds often housed in the now-obsolete card catalog drawers. Pam Peirce, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 Feb. 2022 This wasn’t so in the 1950s, when schedulers went through racks of index cards, each with a particular flight’s info, all stored in what resembled a library card catalog. Frank O’Brien, Ars Technica, 4 Jan. 2022

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'card catalog.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1853, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of card catalog was in 1853

Dictionary Entries Near card catalog

Cite this Entry

“Card catalog.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/card%20catalog. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

card catalog

noun
: a catalog of library books in which a card for each book is alphabetically filed with its call number usually under the title, author, and subject of the book

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