Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A speech sound considered without reference to its status as a phoneme or an allophone in a language.
  • noun A telephone.
  • intransitive verb To make or try to make a telephone connection with; place a call to.
  • intransitive verb To dial (a specific number).
  • intransitive verb To impart (information or news, for example) by telephone.
  • intransitive verb To telephone.
  • idiom (phone it in) To do something in a perfunctory way or with little interest.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A sound; a vocal sound; a tone produced by the vibration of the vocal cords; one of the primary elements of utterance. See phonate, phonetic.
  • noun A telephone: generally applied to the receiver, but sometimes to the whole apparatus.
  • To telephone.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • Colloq. for telephone.
  • noun (Phonetics) a speech sound.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A device for transmitting sound in real time across distances.
  • verb transitive To call (someone) on the telephone.
  • noun linguistics A speech segment that possesses distinct physical or perceptual properties, considered as a physical event without regard to its place in the phonology of a language.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (phonetics) an individual sound unit of speech without concern as to whether or not it is a phoneme of some language
  • noun electronic equipment that converts sound into electrical signals that can be transmitted over distances and then converts received signals back into sounds
  • noun electro-acoustic transducer for converting electric signals into sounds; it is held over or inserted into the ear
  • verb get or try to get into communication (with someone) by telephone

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Greek phōnē, sound, voice; see bhā- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for telephone.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Shortening of telephone.

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