phone call
- noun
- /foʊn kɔl/
- After missing her appointment, she quickly made a phone call to reschedule.
- make phone calls
- receive a phone call
- a follow-up phone call
Tell me about that phone call, man.
- Tell me about that phone call, man.
- From the first phone call to order delivery?
- And then that's when I got the phone call from the president.
- She's received a disturbing phone call from her daughter Diane.
- And he was allowed to make phone calls one night a week.
- I can't get to within two phone calls or emails.
Examples
-
Fourth, caregivers received five phone calls from research staff over the course of the year.
Academic text (2015) -
I'm always just a phone call away.
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Tell me about that phone call, man.
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From the first phone call to order delivery?
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Just make a few phone calls, remember, he said.
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We really need to make a phone call.
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I gotta go upstairs and make a phone call.
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If your proposal is rejected, respond with a polite phone call or letter asking for feedback.
Academic text (2011) -
Someone named Jamie Dobbs made a phone call from here last night.
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- Sidney, there's a phone call for you.
Synonyms
A time when someone phones another person
A time when you speak with someone by phone
A talk between two or more people using a phone
How Immediate
- Specialized
- Texting
- Texting
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'an act of contacting someone by telephone' is directly and compositionally derived from 'phone' (telephone device) + 'call' (an instance of contact). This noun–noun compound follows a common, cross-linguistic compositional pattern and will be immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
Phone call comes from the simple idea that to call someone is to shout or get their attention, and a phone is the tool that lets your voice reach far away. So a phone call is just using a phone to 'contact' someone and 'speak' with them over a distance.