Phonograph

//ˈfəʊnəˌɡɹɑːf// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A device that captures sound waves onto an engraved archive; a lathe.
  2. 2
    machine in which rotating records cause a stylus to vibrate and the vibrations are amplified acoustically or electronically wordnet
  3. 3
    A device that records or plays sound from cylinder records. British, historical
  4. 4
    A record player. Canada, US, historical

    "[…]I've knew people that if they got a rag rug on the floor and a kewpie doll lamp on the phonograph they think they're runnin' a parlor house.'"

  5. 5
    A character or symbol used to represent a sound, especially one used in phonography. dated
Verb
  1. 1
    To record for playback by phonograph. dated, transitive
  2. 2
    To transcribe into phonographic symbols. dated, transitive

Synonyms

All synonyms
gramophonerecord playerrecord playeraudio sound systemaudiophilebinaural system

Example

More examples

"Compact discs have entirely taken the place of phonograph records."

Etymology

From phono- + -graph.

Related phrases

phonograph recordrecord playersound wave

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.