telephone cord
1
1.6
- noun
- /ˈtɛlɪˌfoʊn kɔrd/
:
cable telefónico
- She twined the telephone cord between her fingers.
- wrapping the telephone cord
- stretching the telephone cord
- twisted the telephone cord
Examples
-
To set up the new phone, plug the telephone cord into the wall outlet.
-
Sarah twisted the telephone cord between her fingers.
Fiction book (1992) -
A telephone cord snakes around to the man sitting in the chair, hidden from us.
Fiction book (1994) -
I think there are plenty of people who were born before the year 1990 who know what untangling a telephone cord is like.
Blog text (15) -
She stretches the telephone cord so that she can stick her head out the kitchen door and glare at Ed.
Fiction book (1994) -
He edged over to the kitchen table, watching the coils of the telephone cord stretch, and sat down.
Fiction book (1994) -
He sits on one of the kitchen swivel chairs and twists the telephone cord through his fingers.
Fiction book (1996) -
He followed the telephone cord around the edge of the breakfast-room wall, and there she was, all coiled up in a chair, twiddling her hair with one finger.
Fiction book (1996) -
She wrapped the long telephone cord around the base to keep it organized.
-
He replaced the damaged telephone cord to restore the connection to the handset.
Synonyms
92
2.0
A thin insulated wire that carries electricity to appliances
4
1.9
A coiled wire that connects a phone handset to its base
How Modern
227
1.8
58
1.0
1
3.3
1
1.6
- Archaic
1
6.8
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'telephone' (the device) with 'cord' (an insulated wire); the compound simply names the wire belonging to or used with a telephone. This straightforward noun+noun compositional pattern is cross-linguistically common and would be immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
The telephone cord is the flexible cord that joins the telephone to its handset or the wall. Old phones used a coiled cord so people could move a little while staying on a call, so the name means 'the short, bendy wire that connects a phone and its handset'.