Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Microphone
/ˈmaɪkrəfoʊn/noun
A device that turns sound into an electrical signal.
The Greek roots
μικρός
mikrós
small, little
φωνή
phōnḗ
voice, sound
Literally: “small sound”
The story of the word
The word is older than the instrument. Wheatstone used microphone in 1827 for an acoustic gadget that made very faint sounds audible, built on the model of microscope: tiny things made perceptible. Only in the 1870s did it settle onto the carbon transmitter that made telephones work. So a microphone is not a small telephone; it is an instrument for the small sound.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1827
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
microscopemicrobemegaphonesymphony
In a sentence
The microphone picked up every chair scrape in the hall.
Speak into the microphone, not over it.