carte blanche
/(ˈ)kɑɹt ˈblɑn(t)ʃ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.96 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
1
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A blank paper that is signed by some authority and given to a person to fill as they please.
Countable; Uncountable
adv
As an undifferentiated mass, without regard to distinctions; willy-nilly. (Possibly from confusion with another French phrase, en masse.)
Example Sentences
- "“[…] 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 ?”"
- "We have given technology carte blanche, much in the way Congress has always, in the past, given automatic approval to defense budgets, resulting in the most gigantic graft in history."
- "Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles have indeed retreated with The Dictator, but they’ve gone back 80 years, when the Marx Brothers were given carte blanche at Paramount Pictures with a five-movie run that ended with their best movie, 1933’s Duck Soup."
- "Somewhat unsurprisingly, unleashing the most powerful navy on the planet with carte blanche to exterminate slavers on sight saw a dramatic and sudden collapse in slaver numbers in the late 1840s and early 1850s."
- "That’s especially the case since the Supreme Court issued a ruling last year that provides a former president with immunity from criminal prosecution for all “official acts” taken while in office. Trump and MAGA world interpret this, and not without cause, as giving them carte blanche."
- "2001, Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Alfred A. Knopf (2001), 15, 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.""
Etymology
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /(ˈ)kɑɹt ˈblɑn(t)ʃ/
- British English: /(ˈ)kɑːt ˈblɑːnʃ/