to call at
4
4.0
- phrasal verb
:
hacer escala en
- American and British warships occasionally called at Puerto Barrios, Guatemala's Caribbean port.
- calling at ports
- vessels calling at
- ships calling at
Examples
-
Monarch of the Seas will call at CocoCay, Bahamas, on Nov. 1, instead of Oct. 30, as originally scheduled.
Blog text (22) -
From Aotourou, Bougainville learned that the previous year a British vessel, the Dolphin, had called at the island.
Fiction book (1991) -
When we called at their house, we found that they were on holiday.
-
In the late 1830s, about twenty American whalers a year called at both Sydney and Hobart.
Academic text (1998) -
- The train now arriving at platform seven is the 12:26 First Capital Connect service to Cambridge, calling at Letchworth Garden City, Royston, and Cambridge.
-
Transatlantic liners began to call at Queenstown to pick up mail and passengers from the middle of the nineteenth century.
Academic text (1993) -
The 10:30 to Bournemouth, Swanage and Weymouth will leave from Platform 10, calling at Southampton Central, Bournemouth Central, Bournemouth West.
-
After leaving Larsen Plads in Copenhagen, the ships would call at Gothenburg, Oslo, and Kristiansand in Norway before heading across the North Sea and the Atlantic.
Academic text (1993) -
The cruise ship will call at several tropical islands during its journey.
-
The train is scheduled to call at the central station at noon.
Synonyms
19
3.1
To arrive at a station and stop there
1
3.8
To bring a ship into a harbour or arrive there
To move a ship into a dock and tie it there
How Long
Surface Forms
Morphology
call + at
The meaning 'to stop at a port/station' is directly derivable from 'call' in the sense of making a (brief) visit and the locative preposition 'at' — together indicating visiting/stopping at a place. This verb + preposition composition is a common, predictable pattern (and parallels exist in other languages), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would likely understand it.
Etymology
Call at comes from the image of a ship or train making a short visit: the vessel calls at a port or station when it drops in briefly to pick up or leave people or goods. That's why call at means 'to stop at' a port or station during a journey.