Stereo

How to spell stereo

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce stereo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stereo mean?

1. nounA sound system that reproduces audio through two or more channels to create a sense of depth.
2. adjectiveRecorded or played through two channels to give a spatial, three-dimensional sound.

Stereo in a sentence

• noun

  He turned down the stereo when the phone rang.

• adjective

  The album was remastered in full stereo sound for the reissue.

• noun

  The new car came with a touchscreen stereo and four speakers.

• adjective

  Older broadcasts were mono, but this recording is stereo.

Where does stereo come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek stereos, which literally meant 'solid' or 'firm', and by extension 'three-dimensional' rather than flat. In the nineteenth century scientists adopted stereo- as a prefix for anything giving an impression of depth, most famously in the 'stereoscope', a viewer that fused two slightly different pictures into one solid-looking image. When engineers in the early twentieth century devised a way of recording and playing sound through two channels to create a sense of spatial depth, they called it 'stereophonic', combining stereo- with the Greek phone 'sound or voice'. By the 1950s and 1960s, as home audio became popular, speakers simply clipped that long adjective down to the handy noun 'stereo' for the equipment itself. The spelling keeps the original Greek 'stereo' intact, so the trap is resisting the urge to write the middle as 'sterio' the way it often sounds.

How the word is built

• stereo- (from Greek stereos: solid, three-dimensional), used here as a clipping of stereophonic