carding

Pluralcardings (some meanings)

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of card.

   She is carding wool to prepare the fibers for spinning.

   Security staff have been carding younger customers more strictly this month.

   Note

   Several different verbs share this one form. In textile work it means combing wool fibers loose before spinning. In US usage it means checking someone's ID, usually against an age limit, so "carding customers" and "carding wool" have nothing in common in meaning. An older sense, playing cards, is now dated. Context almost always settles which verb is meant: the object, wool or people, gives it away.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The fraudulent buying and selling of stolen credit card details.

   Investigators traced the carding to a network of overseas servers.

   Online forums dedicated to carding sell stolen account numbers in bulk.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A piece of wool rolled into a soft, even length by a carding machine, prepared for spinning.

   The spinner drew fibers from the carding to form an even thread.

   Each carding was light and airy, ready to twist into yarn.

4. 4
   nounCanadacountable or uncountable

   A police practice of stopping, questioning, and recording a person's information to gather intelligence, when there is no crime or suspicion of one.

   Critics argue that carding disproportionately targets minority communities.

   Officers were required to issue a receipt after each instance of carding.

   Note

   A Canadian policing term, also known as a street check. It can name the practice as a whole or a single stop: carding as a policy, or a carding as one encounter. Because no offense is suspected, the word usually appears where the fairness of policing is argued over. Do not confuse it with the credit-card fraud sense. Officers and street stops, not stolen card numbers, tell you which one is meant.

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