trunk call
1
9.8
- noun
- /trʌŋk kɔːl/
- Archaic
:
llamada de larga distancia
- And the reason we call them trunk calls is because there was no direct connection between my grandparents phone in India and her phone in the US.
And the reason we call them trunk calls is because there was no direct connection between my grandparents phone in India and her phone in the US.
- And the reason we call them trunk calls is because there was no direct connection between my grandparents phone in India and her phone in the US.
Examples
-
An Englishwoman who had never lived in America would have said, "I can always make a trunk call to my solicitors."
-
It's a trunk call.
-
I want to make a trunk call, please.
-
It-- it's a trunk call.
-
Is it possible to make this an ordinary trunk call?
-
This is a trunk call from Mr. Storsch.
-
It's a trunk call.
-
The Scotchman, still waiting for his trunk call to come through, watched what he could of the show from the shade of the verandah.
Fiction book (1996) -
The thing is, right before the hubbub yesterday I made a trunk call to my cousin long-distance and the operator let me owe the surcharge because all I had was three pennies.
-
I received a trunk call from my brother living abroad, and it cost more than I expected.
Synonyms
46
3.2
A phone call to a place far away that costs extra
11
2.3
A phone conversation with someone in another area that costs extra
1
4.9
A phone call to another city that costs more than a local call
Surface Forms
Morphology
trunk + call
Although 'call' clearly denotes a telephone contact, the sense of 'trunk' here is a technical/historical telecom term (trunk line = main/long‑distance line) that a B1 learner who only knows common senses of 'trunk' (tree trunk, car trunk/boot) would not predict. The combined meaning 'long‑distance/outside local area call' is language‑specific and non‑compositional for typical learners, so the expression is opaque.
Etymology
Trunk call comes from old telephone systems where a trunk was a big main line between cities. To make a trunk call you used that big line, often with an operator and an extra charge, so the phrase came to mean a call 'outside the local area' or 'expensive'.