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Glite Dictionary
banana phone

banana phone

7.7
A toy or real banana used like a phone for fun
  • noun
translation icon : teléfono plátano
  • The children burst into laughter when their teacher answered the banana phone during story time.

Examples

  • She bought her nephew a banana phone as a quirky birthday present.

  • The kids love playing with their banana phones.

  • At parties, people sometimes use a real banana as a banana phone for silly photos.

  • Look at my new banana phone!

  • During the school play, a student pretended to receive a call on a banana phone, making everyone laugh.

  • At the birthday party, the kids gathered around to take pictures with the banana phone as a funny prop.

  • He used a toy banana phone to entertain the toddlers during story time, making them giggle.

Surface Forms

banana phone singular
banana phones plural

Morphology

banana + phone

The meaning 'a phone shaped like a banana or a banana used as a pretend phone' is directly derivable from combining 'banana' and 'phone'—a straightforward noun+noun compound describing form or function. This playful, compositional pattern is common cross-linguistically and would be immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituent words.

Etymology

The compound noun banana phone comes from the silly image of holding a banana like a phone to your ear. Because people used real bananas as pretend phones and later made toys shaped like bananas that work as phones, banana phone now means 'a toy shaped like a banana that works as a phone' or 'a banana used as a pretend phone'.