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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
card-carrying
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a card-carrying member (also a paid-up member British English) (= an official member of an organization)
▪ She was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
member
▪ How many of the extra women on the list are card-carrying members of the Conservative party?
▪ As a card-carrying member of the Wilderness Society, I do not advocate less pristine forest.
▪ George Spachtholz has been a proud, card-carrying member of the Loyal Order of the Moose for 45 years.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And Magruder really was a card-carrying bicycle freak who had even ridden his 10-speed to the White House every day.
▪ As a card-carrying member of the Wilderness Society, I do not advocate less pristine forest.
▪ For twenty-two years he was a card-carrying Communist, an activist in the cadre of the party.
▪ George Spachtholz has been a proud, card-carrying member of the Loyal Order of the Moose for 45 years.
▪ How many of the extra women on the list are card-carrying members of the Conservative party?
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
card-carrying

1948, used frequently during Cold War in U.S. (typically in reference to official membership in the communist party), from card (n.1) + present participle of carry (v.).

Wiktionary
card-carrying

a. 1 enrolled as a member of an organization, and having a card to prove it; used especially to signify loyal dedication to that organization or the cause it supports. 2 (context by extension English) Loyal and dedicated to some cause.

Usage examples of "card-carrying".

On April 26 the stream became a flood, and while Saul and Barney Mul-doon tried to reason with Markoff Chaney and he struggled in their grip, Ingolstadters found themselves inundated by Frodo Baggins and His Ring, the Mouse That Roars, the Crew of the Flying Saucer, the Magnificent Ambersons, the House I Live In, the Sound of One Hand, the Territorial Imperative, the Druids of Stonehenge, the Heads of Easter Island, the Lost Continent of Mu, Bugs Bunny and His Fourteen Carrots, the Gospel According to Marx, the Card-Carrying Members, the Sands of Mars, the Erection, the Association, the Amalgamation, the St.

On several occasions I did find that some of these card-carrying ufologists had warned witnesses to report only to them.

Somewhere under the wet and woolly sociological guff which he ladled so unstintingly over the Wilkinsons and me, there had to be a hard-core card-carrying fully-indoctrinated communist.

Wheeling, West Virginia, speech, in which he said he had in his hand the names of fifty-seven card-carrying Communists in the State Department.

Allowing card-carrying members of the Communist Party to handle classified material after the Alger Hiss case would be like allowing avowed members of al-Qaeda to carry box cutters on airplanes after 9-11.

The pull of fashion has always been that of the stamped­ing herd: many men who were not card-carrying Masculinists refused to buy any­thing that did not bear the magic phrase in the familiar blue isosceles triangle.

I was, by now, an accepted, even popular, member of the Rainbow Room crew, a dues-paying, card-carrying union member, and as a young, semi-educated firebrand with a couple of years of college under my belt, a fine private school vocabulary, a culinary degree and a predilection for left-wing politics, I assumed I'd be a welcome addition to the restaurant workers' union-a young man with the workers' interests at heart, a fighter for the downtrodden, an activist who could get things done, someone who could lead and inspire, help to achieve better working conditions and benefits for one of the largest union shops in the country.