Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Gramophone
/ˈɡræməfoʊn/noun
An early record player using flat discs rather than cylinders.
The Greek roots
γράμμα
grámma
letter, thing written
φωνή
phōnḗ
voice, sound
Literally: “written sound”
The story of the word
Emile Berliner registered the name in 1887 for his disc machine, and it is simply phonograph with the halves swapped, since Edison already owned the other arrangement. The technical difference decided the industry: a flat disc can be stamped by the thousand from a single master, and a cylinder cannot. In Britain gramophone stayed the ordinary word for a record player well into the 1960s, and the record label His Master's Voice grew out of Berliner's company.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1887
Same family
phonographtelegramgrammarprogramtelephone
In a sentence
There is a wind-up gramophone in the attic with a box of shellac records.