Telegram

How to spell telegram

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce telegram

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does telegram mean?

1. nounA message sent by telegraph and then delivered in printed or written form.

Telegram in a sentence

• The news of his promotion arrived by telegram the following morning.

• During the war, families dreaded the arrival of a telegram from the army.

Where does telegram come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from two Greek roots: tele, meaning 'far off' or 'at a distance', and gramma, meaning 'something written' or 'a letter of the alphabet'. It was coined in the 1850s, shortly after the electric telegraph began transmitting messages across long distances, to name the written message itself rather than the apparatus. The naming was actually disputed at the time, since strict classicists argued the proper form should have been 'telegrapheme'; the shorter, snappier 'telegram' won out anyway and stuck. The same gramma root sits inside many everyday words such as 'grammar', 'diagram', and 'anagram', while the tele- element reappears in 'telephone' and 'television'. Remembering that the ending is the writing root 'gram', not 'gramme' or 'graph', is the key to spelling it correctly.

How the word is built

• tele- (far, at a distance)
• gram (from Greek gramma: something written or recorded)