Word.ws English Dictionary

cartes blanches

cartes blanches is the plural of carte blanche.

Meaning of carte blanche

Noun

carte blanche (countable and uncountable, plural cartes blanches)

  1. Unlimited discretionary power to act; unrestricted authority.
    • “[…] But since when did army officers afford the luxury of amanuenses in this simple republic ?[…]Does your carte blanche run so far as that also ?”1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
  2. A blank paper that is signed by some authority and given to a person to fill as they please.
    • Indeed, I later learned that when they had bought the place, in 1930, they had given my father's older sister Lina their checkbook, carte blanche, saying, "Do what you want, get what you want."2001, Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Alfred A. Knopf (2001), 15
    Synonyms:
    proxy in blank
  3. A hand with no court cards.
  4. (historical) A chargecard issued by Diners Club International.

See all 5 meanings of carte blanche

Questions about cartes blanches

What is cartes blanches the plural of?
Cartes blanches is the plural of carte blanche.

Words near cartes blanches in the dictionary

  1. carters
  2. Cartersville
  3. Carterton
  4. cartes
  5. cartes anglaises
  6. cartes blanches
  7. cartes de visite
  8. cartesian
  9. Cartesian circle
  10. Cartesian circles
  11. Cartesian closed categories

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cartes blanches (page history and authors); carte blanche (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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