Is it 'you are such a card' , or 'you are such a cad'?

[TheDevilWearsPrimark]

Or can it be either, but they have different meanings?

Help me to settle a raging debate I am having with a friend over facebook right now.

Hmm yes James Hewitt [re-arranges private semantic furniture]

Marina, I was testing the connotations against that other word DWP mentioned, which I sort of can't bear to type - which is wholly downright insulting; and also against "spiv", which is very close to cad but hasn't any redeeming/ambiguous nuances.

Bounder, hmm. Louche.

You have to have a certain amount of style to be a cad.

James Hewitt is definitely the benchmark

What about Alan Clark, he was a cad, surely?

Cads are always posh and usually good looking.
A fat brickie who flirts with his best mate's wife = sleazebag. A handsome old Etonian who does the same = cad

Ladies have to know a cads reputation and not care and carry on with him anyway.
James Bond qualify as a cad??

oh yes

working class cads are just wankers

Bink of course see you next tuesday is insulting. But I don't buy into that idea we should ever use it.

Reclaim the Streets didn't work out. Let's try Reclaiming the Cunt.

I was exactly wondering about the socio-economic connotations there. Just how posh is a cad? Is the Seventeenth Earl of Wimborne a cad, or a bounder, or just a rotter?

Bink - oh I think he's an absolute cad AND a bounder.
What about Terry Thomas???

Is the devilishly cute young man who works in our local shop a cad or just a slut. Or just a single young man?

He flirts outrageously with everyone, and often has groups of girls in the shop cooing and giggling over him.

I've got a good one!

Katie Price Cad or Card?

only gentlemen can be cads

and she ain't funny

I would find anyone who could share a bed with Peter Andre hilarious, frankly.

Re online refs to "card" - it's there in the online OED, as below ...

"c. mod. slang. [app. suggested by such expressions as sure card, etc.; see prec.], applied to a person, with adj. (as knowing, old, queer, etc.) indicating some eccentricity or peculiarity. Also without adjective: a ?character?, an ?original?; a clever, audacious, etc., person.

1836 DICKENS Sk. Boz 264 (Hoppe) Mr. Thomas Potter whose great aim it was to be considered as a ?knowing card?. 1852 Bleak Ho. xx. 199 But such an old card as this. 1853 Ibid. lxii. 596 You know what a card Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter. 1873 BLACK Pr. Thule x. 151 You are the most romantic card I know. 1905 A. BENNETT Tales of Five Towns I. 9 It would be..a topic for years, the crown of his reputation as a card. 1911 (title) The Carda Story of Adventure in the Five Towns. 1929 W. DEEPING Roper's Row xxi, ?What the Midlanders call ?a card?.? ?What's that?? ?An original, a person.? 1942 ?W. B. JOHNSON? Widening Stain (1943) iii. 34 That old Witch-Hammer was really quite a card."

a cad is a man who uses women - for sex, for money, and then discards them once they are no longer of use. In the old days, he'd promise the earth, get his end away, steal their virtue and then not marry them

a card is a funny person, in a kind of excentric way - i just know I spelled that wrong!

Another one is 'caution' "oooh, you're a caution" - daft, bubbly, funny, bit weird with it, likable, maybe a touch bossy or outragious!

Captain Wickham (Pride and prejudice) definate cad

I've never heard of 'a caution' Hecate, but thats a good one!

One of my favourite ever malapropisms was my friend wrongly padding out (is there a verb for that?) 'cad' and calling a cad 'cadaverous'. White, stiff, waxy/potentially a bit smelly?