Telephone

How to spell telephone

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce telephone

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does telephone mean?

1. nounA device that transmits and receives the human voice over a distance, allowing two people to speak in real time.

Telephone in a sentence

• The telephone is ringing.

• The telephone rang as I was leaving.

Where does telephone come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Telephone is a compound built from two Greek elements: tele, meaning 'far off' or 'at a distance', and phone, meaning 'sound' or 'voice'. Put together the word literally means 'far sound', a fitting label for a device that carries the human voice across great distances. The combining form tele had already produced 'telegraph' in the early 1800s, so the pattern was familiar when inventors needed a name for voice transmission. The word came into wide use in the 1870s as the instrument was developed and patented, and it quickly spread into everyday speech across English. The same tele root sits inside television, telescope, and telepathy, while phone reappears in microphone, symphony, and phonics, which is a useful reminder that the 'ph' spells the /f/ sound here.

How the word is built

• tele- (Greek: far, at a distance)
• phone (Greek: sound, voice)