cable radio
- noun
- /ˈkeɪbəl ˈreɪdioʊ/
- Archaic
- I love listening to cable radio in the morning.
Examples
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She remembers listening to her favorite stations on cable radio before FM became widely available.
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Cable radio provided clearer reception than traditional over-the-air broadcasts in some urban locations.
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Many apartment complexes offered cable radio as part of their utilities package in the 1980s.
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Do you have cable radio at home?
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Many listeners prefer cable radio because it offers a wide variety of ad-free stations.
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With cable radio, you can enjoy high-quality audio without interruptions from commercials.
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Our neighborhood recently switched to cable radio to improve sound quality for music lovers.
Synonyms
A service that sends television and radio programs to homes through wires
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'cable' (a wired distribution system) + 'radio' (broadcast audio) yields radio programs delivered via cable rather than over the air. This straightforward noun–noun combination follows common compounding patterns and would be inferable by a B1 learner who knows both constituent words.
Etymology
Cable radio comes from the simple idea of sending radio signals into homes through a cable, a kind of wire, instead of 'over the air'. Because the sound came by wire it was often clearer in buildings, so the term means a radio service sent by cable rather than through the air.