gramophone
pronunciation
How to pronounce gramophone in British English:
UK [ˈɡræməfəʊn]
How to pronounce gramophone in American English:
US [ˈɡræməfoʊn]
-
- Noun:
- an antique record player; the sound of the vibrating needle is amplified acoustically
Word Origin
- gramophone
- gramophone: [19] The term gramophone was registered as a trademark in 1887 by the German-born American inventor Emil Berliner for a sound recording and reproducing device he had developed using a disc (as opposed to the cylinder of Edison’s phonograph). He coined it simply by reversing the elements of phonogram, a term adopted for a ‘sound recording’ in the early 1880s and composed of descendants of Greek phōné ‘voice, sound’ and grámma ‘something written’. It seems to have begun to give way to record player in the mid 1950s.
- gramophone (n.)
- "machine for recording and reproducing sounds by needle-tracing on some solid material," 1887, trademark by German-born U.S. inventor Emil Berliner (1851-1929), an inversion of phonogram (1884) "the tracing made by a phonograph needle," which was coined from Greek phone "voice, sound," from PIE root *bha- (2) "to speak, tell, say" (see fame (n.)) + gramma "something written" (see -gram). Berliner's machine used a flat disc and succeeded with the public. Edison's phonograph used a cylinder and did not. Despised by linguistic purists (Weekley calls gramophone "An atrocity formed by reversing phonogram") who tried at least to amend it to grammophone, it was replaced by record player after mid-1950s. There also was a graphophone (1886).
Example
- 1. It is as though a person 's entire record collection worked on only one brand of gramophone .
- 2. In fact , the ability to copy music has been deeply disruptive ever since the invention of the gramophone .
- 3. The desktop calculator has gone ; desktop personal computers have arrived ; the ipod has taken over from the gramophone .
- 4. The phonograph , or gramophone , was invented by thomas edison in 1877 and was on the mass market by the turn of the century .
- 5. Instead , his finest poems remain his best-loved : ones about his mother overhearing him playing blues records on the gramophone , or of feeling , once a guest has left , " the instantaneous grief of being alone " .