dial phone
1
6.8
- noun
- /ˈdaɪəl foʊn/
- Archaic
:
teléfono de disco
- I still have a rotary dial phone on the kitchen wall.
- a rotary dial phone
- an old dial phone
At my age, I can look back to a childhood and adolescence of Rotary dial phones.
- At my age, I can look back to a childhood and adolescence of Rotary dial phones.
Examples
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Coming after operator-mediated telephones, rotary dial phones became popular by the late 1800s.
Blog text (14) -
We had a single rotary dial phone in the kitchen, but our parents frowned on us using it.
Blog text (19) -
We still had rotary dial phones in some departments.
Academic text (2002) -
like dial phones.
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Nonetheless, campaigns in the past have succeeded at managing strike lists with paper and pencil and dial phones.
Blog text (28) -
Growing up, I lived in a very rural area where not only did I have the standard rotary dial phones but also a very unique dial tone, quite different from one I've ever heard since.
Blog text (34) -
It can also be done with pencils, paper, and dial phones, more reliably than ORCA did.
Blog text (28) -
It is as if one were to visit a country in which the hosts happily believed themselves on the cutting edge of technological innovation and, in support of this belief, proudly displayed a rotary-dial phone, a manual typewriter, and a mimeograph machine.
Academic text (2002) -
The antique shop displayed a beautiful rotary dial phone from the 1950s.
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My grandmother still prefers to use her vintage rotary dial phone for making calls.
Synonyms
1
4.9
A phone with a round dial you turn to call someone
How Old-Fashioned
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun meaning is directly derivable from the constituents: 'dial' (to call by entering numbers) + 'phone' (telephone) yields a phone that is dialed or has a dial. Despite a minor POS shift (verb used attributively), the composition is straightforward and follows common English noun-modifier patterns, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the intended device.
Etymology
Dial phone comes from the round dial on old telephones that you had to turn with your finger to choose each number. Because people 'dialed' by turning that wheel, dial phone means a telephone with that turning dial.