carte blanche

[ kahrt-blanch, blahnch; French kart blahnsh ]
See synonyms for carte blanche on Thesaurus.com
noun,plural cartes blanches [kahrts-blanch, blahnch; French kart blahnsh]. /ˈkɑrts ˈblæntʃ, ˈblɑntʃ; French kart ˈblɑ̃ʃ/.
  1. unconditional authority; full discretionary power: It appears that the government has given the military carte blanche.She was given carte blanche to decorate her room as she wished, perhaps an unwise decision by her parents.

  2. a sheet of paper that is blank except for a signature and given by the signer to another person to write in what they please.

  1. Cards. a hand having no face card but with a special scoring value, as in piquet.

Origin of carte blanche

1
First recorded in 1655–65 as blank, blanck , or blanche (without carte ) in the card game sense, in 1700–10 in the sense “blank, signed document,” and in 1760–70 in the sense “discretionary power”; from French: literally, “blank document”; see carte, blank

word story For carte blanche

Carte blanche (originally without “carte”) entered the English language as a French loanword in the mid-17th century, when card games were all the rage. A highly fashionable game of the time was piquet, in which a carte blanche was a hand having no face card.
By the 18th century, the meaning had expanded to include a blank piece of paper which someone signed, trusting a second party to come up with the stipulations of a deal. This idea of signing a yet unwritten contract and handing over authority to the other party led us to the sense most familiar to speakers of modern-day English. Nowadays, if someone has been given carte blanche, it means that the person is free to do or say whatever they please.
Note that it is a mistake to say “a carte blanche” unless you are talking about a piquet hand or a blank, signed contract. When used in the sense of giving someone free rein, you say the person has been given “carte blanche,” and not “a carte blanche.”
On the other hand, blank check, a term with very similar meanings, is always used with “a” or some other determiner. That term underwent the same progression as carte blanche from its literal meaning to a figurative one (as in Congress gave the president a blank check of unconditional support ). Unlike carte blanche, however, the literal meaning has not fallen out of use. We may rarely play piquet today, but we still occasionally write checks.

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How to use carte blanche in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for carte blanche

carte blanche

/ (ˈkɑːt ˈblɑːntʃ, French kart blɑ̃ʃ) /


nounplural cartes blanches (ˈkɑːts ˈblɑːntʃ, French kart blɑ̃ʃ)
  1. complete discretion or authority: the government gave their negotiator carte blanche

  2. cards a piquet hand containing no court cards: scoring ten points

Origin of carte blanche

1
C18: from French: blank paper

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Cultural definitions for carte blanche

carte blanche

[ (kahrt blahnsh, kahrt blahnch) ]


To be given “carte blanche” is to receive the power and authority to do as one wishes: “The prime minister herself did not take any action on the refugee issue but gave her minister of the interior carte blanche to deal with the situation.” Carte blanche is French for “blank card,” meaning one that can be filled in as a person wishes.

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.