Telly

How to spell telly

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce telly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does telly mean?

1. nounA television set, or television viewing in general (informal).

Telly in a sentence

• After dinner they slumped on the sofa to watch the telly.

• The new flat-screen telly barely fits on the bracket above the fireplace.

Where does telly come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Telly is an affectionate British clipping of 'television', a word itself stitched together from the Greek tele, meaning 'far off' or 'distant', and the Latin visio, meaning 'sight' or 'seeing', so that the whole originally described 'seeing at a distance'. Television entered English in the early twentieth century as the technology was being developed, and as sets became fixtures in ordinary homes during the 1940s and 1950s the public shortened the formal mouthful into something cosier. The familiar -y or -ie ending, the same one that turns 'dog' into 'doggy', gave 'telly' its homely, casual feel. The spelling trap is precisely that homely ending: writers reaching for it must remember the double l and the final -y rather than -ie or -ly. It remains chiefly British and Commonwealth slang, where it sits alongside the equally informal 'box' as a name for the household set.

How the word is built

• tell- (clipped from television, ultimately tele- 'far off'
• vision 'sight')
• -y (informal, affectionate suffix)