directional mike
- noun
- /dɪˈrɛkʃənəl maɪk/
- Informal
:
micrófono direccional
- The director used a directional mike to capture the actors' voices without background noise during the outdoor shoot.
Examples
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For the interview, they set up a directional mike to ensure it would pick up only the interviewee's responses.
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In the concert, the sound engineer adjusted the directional mike to focus on the lead singer while minimizing the musicians' noise.
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Directional mike, telescopic zoom.
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Our radio was hooked to the state-of-the-art directional mikes that were in two of the other five cars trailing the man believed to be the Gentleman.
Fiction book (1995) -
To deal with that, Alf had wired three of Amari's surveillance team members with directional mikes in the hope they could work their way close to Robbie and capture better sound.
Fiction book (1999)
Synonyms
1
4.1
A microphone that picks up sound mainly from one direction to reduce background noise
A long, narrow microphone that records sound clearly from one direction
A long narrow microphone that picks up sound from one direction, often from far away
A long, narrow microphone that picks up sound from far away in one direction
A long, thin microphone that you point at a sound to record it from far away
How Directional
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and compositionally derived from 'directional' (related to a particular direction/orientation) and 'mike' (microphone): a microphone that picks up sound from a specific direction. This adjective+noun pattern is literal and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the intended sense.
Etymology
The noun directional mike comes from a simple picture: the device is like a small tube or cone pointed at a person, so it listens mainly from one direction and ignores noise from the sides. So directional (pointing one way) plus mike (microphone) means 'to pick up sound primarily from a specific direction'.