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answerphone

noun
/ˈæn.sɜː(ɹ)ˌfəʊn/UK

Etymology

From answer + (tele)phone.

  1. borrowed from téléphone — “kind of megaphone; system of communication using musical notes”
  2. derived from *bʰeh₂-✻ — “to say; to speak”
  3. derived from φωνή — “sound; voice”
  4. derived from *kʷelh₁-✻ — “to turn end-over-end; to revolve around; hence, to dwell, sojourn”
  5. derived from τῆλε — “afar, far away, far off”
  6. compounded as answerphone — “answer + telephone”

Definitions

  1. A telephone containing a built-in device for recording incoming callers’ messages for…

    A telephone containing a built-in device for recording incoming callers’ messages for later retrieval.

    • I keep trying to call her, but all I get is the answerphone.
    • It started with a message in my office on that fiendish modern invention, second in its monstrousness only to the television, the answerphone.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for answerphone. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA