Card

Card is the English rendering of lame, the French esoteric word used as a synonym for a tarot card. The use of lame, like that of arcanum, is attributed to Paul Christian in the second half of the nineteenth century. Meaning a blade or thin plate, it evokes an engraved tablet and gives the card an almost ritual dimension. French readers thus speak of lame XVI for The Tower or of the lames of the batons; tarot readers use it interchangeably with “card” or “arcanum.”