minidisc
Pluralminidiscs
- 1A recordable disc made in the MiniDisc format, used mainly to store and play back audio.
I burned the whole album onto a single minidisc for the road trip.
She kept a shoebox full of minidiscs from her college years.
Note
Built from mini- and disc, the lowercase word names the object you hold, while capitalized MiniDisc names the format. The disc is a 64 mm magneto-optical platter sealed in a rigid cartridge, and its audio is usually compressed with the ATRAC codec. Write minidisc, plural minidiscs, for the physical item, and keep the capitals for the system it belongs to.
- 2A device for playing back and recording audio on discs in the MiniDisc format.
The journalist captured the entire interview on a portable minidisc.
He repaired the old minidisc, and its tray slid out smoothly again.
Note
Here the name of the medium stretches to the machine that uses it, the way a format and its dedicated player often share one word. Jayne K. Guberman's In our own voices (2005) tells interviewers to make sure their minidisc has microphone inputs, and only a device could have those. When the word could mean either, the context settles it: you insert the disc itself, but you plug a microphone into the player.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with minidisc, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.
Origin
Formed from the prefix "mini-" combined with "disc."