telephone

Questions about telephone

What is another word for telephone?

It depends which telephone you mean. In the sense “electronic equipment that converts sound into electrical signals that can be transmitted over distances and then converts received signals back into sounds”, the synonyms are phone, telephone set. Across all 3 senses there are 6 distinct synonyms, and they are not interchangeable with each other — this page lists them under the sense each one belongs to.

What is the opposite of telephone?

WordNet records no antonym for telephone. Antonymy in WordNet is a relation between specific word forms rather than between concepts, so it is recorded only where lexicographers judged the pairing direct. An absence here means none was recorded, not that none can be imagined.

Why are the synonyms for telephone split into groups?

Because telephone carries 3 recorded senses and each has its own set of substitutes. A single flat list would put words from unrelated meanings side by side with nothing to tell them apart, which is exactly how a writer picks the wrong one. The grouping comes from WordNet's synsets, not from an editorial judgement of ours.

Where do the synonyms for telephone come from?

From Princeton University's WordNet, a lexical database maintained by lexicographers since 1985. A synonym here means a word form that shares a synset with this word — a set of forms interchangeable in one recorded context. Nothing on this page is generated by a language model.

Other views of telephone

• Full entry for telephoneAll 3 senses, with examples, usage labels, syllables and pronunciation.
• Rhymes for telephoneWords matching from the last stressed vowel onward, grouped by syllable count.
• Thesaurus homeHow WordNet synsets work, and the collections built for synonym work.