telephone
Pluraltelephones
Verbtelephones, telephoning, telephoned
Pluraltelephones
Formstelephones, telephoning, telephoned
- 1A device that carries speech as signals over wires or radio so that people at a distance can talk to each other; also, its handheld part containing the earpiece and mouthpiece.
She lifted the telephone and dialed the number from memory.
Most offices replaced their desk telephones with mobile devices years ago.
UsageIn everyday speech usually shortened to phone: on the phone, answer the phone, by phone.
Similarphone
Note
The name is older than the electric instrument. It was given to earlier inventions, such as Gottfried Huth's shouting towers of 1796 and ship fog horns of the 1840s, and Johann Philipp Reis used it around 1860, before Alexander Graham Bell applied it to his device in 1876.
- 2To call or try to call someone by telephone, or to pass on a message or information to someone by telephone.
I'll telephone the doctor first thing tomorrow morning.
She telephoned ahead to make sure the shop was open.
UsageYou telephone a person, with no to. In everyday speech call or phone is more usual.
Note
Two constructions live in one verb. With an object, you telephone someone; without one, you simply telephone, as Robert Barr's character asks in Lord Stranleigh Abroad (1913): "Why didn't I telephone?" The bare use often takes a place phrase instead. The Railway Magazine of 1944 has a fireman who telephoned from a lineside box. With an object, Trains Illustrated in 1961 has a ganger who promptly telephoned the signalman.
- 3A game in which a message is whispered from person to person, becoming distorted by the time it reaches the end of the line.
The teacher organized a round of telephone to settle the class down.
Telephone always shows how quickly a simple sentence can mutate.
UsageSay play telephone or a game of telephone.
Note
The US and Canadian name for the whispering game that other English speakers may know as Chinese whispers. It takes no article (children play telephone) or comes framed as a game of telephone. Erik Adams, reviewing The Simpsons in 2013, jokes that since 1995 no game of telephone has ended without someone slipping the show's "purple monkey dishwasher" into the chain.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Erik Adams reviewed The Simpsons in 2013. avclub.com
- The review jokes that since spring 1995, games of telephone have included the Simpsons phrase “purple monkey dishwasher.” en.wiktionary.org
Less common meaning
- 4A situation in which an original message becomes distorted and misunderstood as it is passed from person to person.
By the time the new policy reached the warehouse floor, a long game of telephone had twisted it into something nobody intended.
The eyewitness accounts became a game of telephone, each retelling less accurate than the last.
UsageUsually in the frame a game of telephone.
Note
Here the game becomes a diagnosis for any chain of retellings that bends the facts. David Dobbs, writing in Pacific Standard in 2017, describes a career that may have been derailed "because a game of telephone went bad."
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Practice
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Origin
Alexander Graham Bell first used this word for the modern instrument in 1876, though earlier devices had also borne the name. In its modern sense it followed German Telephon, ultimately from Ancient Greek têle ('afar') plus phōnḗ ('voice, sound').
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Alexander Graham Bell first used telephone for the modern instrument in 1876. en.wiktionary.org
- Earlier devices had also been called telephone. en.wikipedia.org
- The modern electrical-device sense was modelled on German Telephon. Wiktionary identifies the earlier musical-signalling sense as the borrowing from French téléphone. en.wiktionary.org
- The ultimate elements are Ancient Greek têle, meaning afar, and phōnḗ, meaning voice or sound. en.wiktionary.org