Phonographies

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A method of recording sound onto various mediums for playback later
2. the process of producing audio recordings that can be reproduced
3. a collection of audio recordings that capture sounds in different forms and styles

Etymology: "Phonographies" is simply the plural of "phonography", so its history is the history of that noun. The root is Greek: "phōnē" meant "sound" or "voice", and "-graphia" meant "writing" or "recording", so the combined sense was writing down sound. The word came into English from French "phonographie", and it originally named a system of phonetic writing or shorthand that represented speech sounds with symbols. Over time the meaning moved from writing sound to capturing it. Once sound could be recorded mechanically, the same root was applied to recording and reproducing it, which is the sense this plural describes: the processes of producing audio recordings that can be played back. The plural simply counts the separate methods or instances of that work.