Adjacent Words

phone definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: electronic equipment that converts sound into electrical signals that can be transmitted over distances and then converts received signals back into sounds; "I talked to him on the telephone" [syn: telephone, phone, telephone set]
2: (phonetics) an individual sound unit of speech without concern as to whether or not it is a phoneme of some language [syn: phone, speech sound, sound]
3: electro-acoustic transducer for converting electric signals into sounds; it is held over or inserted into the ear; "it was not the typing but the earphones that she disliked" [syn: earphone, earpiece, headphone, phone] v
1: get or try to get into communication (with someone) by telephone; "I tried to call you all night"; "Take two aspirin and call me in the morning" [syn: call, telephone, call up, phone, ring]

Merriam Webster's

I. noun Etymology: Greek ph?n? Date: circa 1866 a speech sound considered as a physical event without regard to its place in the sound system of a language II. noun Etymology: by shortening Date: 1884 1. telephone 2. earphone III. verb (phoned; phoning) Date: 1889 telephone

Oxford Reference Dictionary

1. n. & v.tr. & intr. colloq. = TELEPHONE. Phrases and idioms: phone book = telephone directory. phone-in n. a broadcast programme during which the listeners or viewers telephone the studio etc. and participate. Etymology: abbr. 2. n. a simple vowel or consonant sound. Etymology: formed as PHONEME

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(phones, phoning, phoned) Frequency: The word is one of the 1500 most common words in English. 1. The phone is an electrical system that you use to talk to someone else in another place, by dialling a number on a piece of equipment and speaking into it. You can buy insurance over the phone... She looked forward to talking to her daughter by phone... Do you have an address and phone number for him? = telephone N-SING: usu the N, also by N 2. The phone is the piece of equipment that you use when you dial someone's phone number and talk to them. Two minutes later the phone rang... Doug's 14-year-old son Jamie answered the phone. = telephone N-COUNT: usu the N see also cellular phone, mobile phone 3. If you say that someone picks up or puts down the phone, you mean that they lift or replace the receiver. She picked up the phone, and began to dial Maurice Campbell's number... = receiver N-SING: usu the N 4. When you phone someone, you dial their phone number and speak to them by phone. He'd phoned Laura to see if she was better... I got more and more angry as I waited for her to phone. = telephone, ring VERB: V n, V 5. If you say that someone is on the phone, you mean that they are speaking to someone else by phone. She's always on the phone, wanting to know what I've been up to. PHRASE: v-link PHR, PHR after v

Moby Thesaurus

allophone, alveolar, amplitude, apico-alveolar, apico-dental, articulation, aspiration, assimilation, auditory effect, auditory phenomenon, bilabial, buzz, cacuminal, call, call box, call up, cerebral, check, coin telephone, consonant, continuant, dental, desk telephone, dial, dial telephone, diphthong, dissimilation, earphone, epenthetic vowel, explosive, extension, give a ring, glide, glottal, glottalization, guttural, hang up, headphone, hold the phone, hydrophone, idiophone, labial, labialization, labiodental, labiovelar, laryngeal, lateral, lingual, liquid, listen in, loudness, make a call, manner of articulation, microphone, modification, monophthong, morphophoneme, mouthpiece, mute, nasal, noise, occlusive, optophone, palatal, parasitic vowel, pay station, peak, pharyngeal, pharyngealization, phoneme, plosive, prothetic vowel, public telephone, push-button telephone, radiophone, radiotelephone, receiver, retroflex, ring, ring off, ring up, segmental phoneme, semivowel, sonance, sonant, sonority, sound, sound intensity level, sound propagation, sound wave, speech sound, stop, surd, syllabic nucleus, syllabic peak, syllable, telephone, telephone booth, telephone engineering, telephone extension, telephone mechanics, telephone receiver, telephonics, telephony, transition sound, transmitter, triphthong, ultrasound, velar, vocable, vocalic, vocoid, voice, voiced sound, voiceless sound, voicing, vowel, wall telephone