dial

1. 1.

   operate a dial to select a telephone number

   “You must take the receiver off the hook before you dial”

   Broaderoperate

   telephone

2. 2.

   choose by means of a dial

   “dial a telephone number”

   Broaderchoose

Other forms of dial

plural

dials·

past tense or participle

dialled

present participle

dialling

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about dial

What does dial mean?

dial means "the face of a timepiece; graduated to show the hours". That is the primary sense; the word has 6 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in dial?

dial has 2 syllables: di-al. The stress falls on "di". In IPA it is /ˈdaɪəl/.

What is another word for dial?

Close synonyms include telephone dial. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is dial a common word?

dial is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.