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Webster 1913 Edition


Telephone

Tel′e-phone

,
Noun.
[Gr. [GREEK] far off + [GREEK] sound.]
(Physics)
An instrument for reproducing sounds, especially articulate speech, at a distance.
☞ The ordinary telephone consists essentially of a device by which currents of electricity, produced by sounds through the agency of certain mechanical devices and exactly corresponding in duration and intensity to the vibrations of the air which attend them, are transmitted to a distant station, and there, acting on suitable mechanism, reproduce similar sounds by repeating the vibrations. The necessary variations in the electrical currents are usually produced by means of a microphone attached to a thin diaphragm upon which the voice acts, and are intensified by means of an induction coil. In the magnetic telephone, or magneto-telephone, the diaphragm is of soft iron placed close to the pole of a magnet upon which is wound a coil of fine wire, and its vibrations produce corresponding vibrable currents in the wire by induction. The mechanical, or string, telephone is a device in which the voice or sound causes vibrations in a thin diaphragm, which are directly transmitted along a wire or string connecting it to a similar diaphragm at the remote station, thus reproducing the sound. It does not employ electricity.

Tel′e-phone

,
Verb.
T.
To convey or announce by telephone.

Definition 2024


Telephone

Telephone

German

Noun

Telephone n

  1. plural of Telephon

telephone

telephone

English

A rotary-dial telephone

Noun

telephone (plural telephones)

  1. A telecommunication device (originally mechanical, and now electronic) used for two-way talking with another person (often shortened to phone).
  2. (US) Chinese whispers.
    • 2013 October 27, Erik Adams, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “The PTA Disbands””, in The Onion AV Club:
      And since the spring of 1995, no game of telephone has ended without some Simpsons-loving smart-ass dropping “purple monkey dishwasher” into the chain.

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Verb

telephone (third-person singular simple present telephones, present participle telephoning, simple past and past participle telephoned)

  1. To (attempt to) contact someone using the telephone.
    • 1913, Robert Barr, chapter 4, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad:
      “I came down like a wolf on the fold, didn’t I ?  Why didn’t I telephone ?  Strategy, my dear boy, strategy. This is a surprise attack, and I’d no wish that the garrison, forewarned, should escape. …”

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