Mike

How to spell mike

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce mike

What does mike mean?

1. nounAn informal word for a microphone, the device that converts sound into an electrical signal.
2. verbTo fit or equip a person or place with a microphone.

Mike in a sentence

• noun

  The speaker tapped the mike to check that it was working.

• verb

  The sound crew arrived early to mike each performer before the show.

• noun

  The singer dropped her mike at the end of the set.

• verb

  Engineers had to mike the entire orchestra for the live recording.

Where does mike come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This is the everyday short form of microphone, a word assembled in the nineteenth century from two Greek elements: mikros, meaning 'small', and phone, meaning 'voice' or 'sound', so the full word literally described a device for capturing small sounds. As the gadget became common on stage and in broadcasting, speakers naturally clipped the long word down to a single syllable. Rather than keep the awkward fragment 'mic', which looks as though it should rhyme with 'tick', writers added a silent 'e' and a 'k' to spell it phonetically as 'mike', matching the way 'bike' and 'like' are read. Both spellings, 'mic' and 'mike', circulate today, but 'mike' is the older respelled form and the one that reads cleanly aloud. The 'k' and final 'e' are precisely the trap, since the parent word microphone contains neither.

How the word is built

• mike (clipped, respelled form of microphone, from Greek mikros 'small'
• phone 'voice/sound')

Words that sound like mike

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• mic: A microphone, the device that converts sound into an electrical signal for amplifying or recording.