Phonographs

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A recording device that captures sound by engraving vibrations onto a medium, enabling the playback of audio recordings at a subsequent time
2. An apparatus designed to record and reproduce audio by forming grooves that reproduce sound waves from a physical medium whenever played
3. Mechanical or electrical machines that record sounds onto discs and reproduce them by tracing those grooves

Etymology: "Phonographs" is simply the plural of "phonograph," the machine that records and plays back sound on cylinders or discs. The plural form is the one most readers will meet, since the word itself is the older name for what later became known as the record player. The singular "phonograph" is built from two Greek elements: "phono-," from Greek "phōnē," meaning "sound" or "voice," and "-graph," from Greek "graphein," meaning "to write." Put together, the name describes a device that writes sound, which is exactly what Thomas Edison's 1877 invention did, etching the vibrations of a voice into tinfoil on a rotating cylinder. Because the word was assembled from classical parts, it follows the same pattern as older coinages like "telegraph" and "photograph," in which "-graph" marks an instrument or record of something.

Synonyms: record players, gramophones, turntables