phone1
/fəʊn
/noun
1A telephone: a few seconds later the phone rang a receptionist answered the phone [as modifier]: a phone number...
- A telling example: there are more cell phones than land-line phones in Mumbai today.
- It turns out that people who don't have mobiles or fixed landline phones use payphones more than any other group.
- The bandits also stole three cellular phones and two cordless phones, before escaping in a waiting vehicle.
Synonyms
telephone, mobile phone, mobile, cell phone, car phone, radio-telephone, cordless phone, videophone, extension;
North American speakerphone
British informal blower
British rhyming slang dog and bone
2 (phones) informal Headphones or earphones.I had a pair of SR-325i and must admit they were the most uncomfortable phones I have ever placed on my head....
- If you've got your eye on a nice pair of phones but their cord is too short for your listening setup, an extension cord designed for headphones can bridge the gap.
- On paper it sounds pretty boring, and through the phones it's not much better.
verb (also phone up or phone someone up)
1Contact someone by telephone: [with object]: he phoned her at work [no object]: she phoned about twenty minutes ago...
- She phoned me up and we pondered it for a few minutes, before realising the PC in question didn't have any speakers.
- Sloan, who organised the music, wrote a wish list of all her favourite bands in the world and then started phoning them up.
- I have people phoning me up with their concerns.
Synonyms
telephone, call, call up, give someone a call/ring, ring, ring up, get someone on the phone, get on the phone to, get, reach, dial, make/place a call (to)
informal buzz, give someone a buzz
British informal bell, give someone a bell/tinkle, get on the blower to
North American informal get someone on the horn
1.1 (phone it in) informal Work or perform without much effort, interest, or enthusiasm: I think of my playing as committed—I can’t remember ever phoning it in at any performance...
- Because Bill Barol and his beloved Blather Blog has returned after a months-long hiatus, including a few weeks there when he was obviously just sort of phoning it in, not that we don't all do that on occasion, of course.
- In fact, I think Jumbah is totally phoning it in.
- Well, I guess I'd be phoning it in too if I knew that after my scene wrapped I could go back to partying on my yacht with my movie star friends on Lake Como.
Phrases
on the phone
Origin
Late 19th century: abbreviation of telephone.
Rhymes
phone2
/fəʊn/noun Phonetics
A speech sound; the smallest discrete segment of sound in a stream of speech.It has been shown that enlarging the phone set and using more alternative symbols to represent partial variations and attempting to use more refined acoustic models trained from accurate surface form transcriptions are of little benefit....
- The justification was that phone boundaries are much more dynamic than stable, interior parts of phones.
Origin
Mid 19th century: from Greek phōnē 'sound, voice'.