'stereocard' originates from modern English coinage, combining the prefix 'stereo-' (from Greek 'stereos', meaning 'solid' or 'three-dimensional') and 'card' (from Old French 'carte', from Latin 'charta', meaning 'paper' or 'leaf').

'stereocard' developed from 19th-century terms such as 'stereograph' and the two-word form 'stereo card'; these terms were used to describe mounted stereoscopic images and eventually the concatenated form 'stereocard' came into use in English.

Initially, it meant 'a card bearing a stereoscopic image for viewing in a stereoscope'; over time the term has remained largely the same in meaning but is now primarily used in historical or collecting contexts to refer to antique stereoscopic cards.