earphone
SayEER-fohnUS/ˈɪɹfoʊn//ˈɪə(ɹ)fəʊn/
Pluralearphones
- 1A small transducer that changes electric signals into sound, held close to the ear, as in a telephone earpiece or a headphone.
The pilot pressed the earphone closer to hear the tower's instructions.
Cheap earphones often distort the bass at high volume.
Note
Built from ear plus phone, it belongs to the vocabulary of sound engineering, where the key word is transducer: a device that turns one form of energy into another, working in the opposite direction from a microphone. In everyday speech the plural earphones is the usual form for a pair worn on both ears, and it shades into headphone. Earpiece suits the single unit on a telephone.
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Origin
Formed by combining "ear" and "phone".