Liberal Dictionary English Dictionary
noun
- a phonograph.
noun
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- Also called: acoustic gramophonea device for reproducing the sounds stored on a record: now usually applied to the nearly obsolete type that uses a clockwork motor and acoustic hornUS and Canadian name: phonograph
- (as modifier)a gramophone record
- the technique and practice of recording sound on discthe gramophone has made music widely available
1887, trademark by German-born U.S. inventor Emil Berliner (1851-1929), an inversion of phonogram (1884) “the tracing made by a phonograph needle,” coined from Greek phone “voice, sound” (see fame (n.)) + gramma “something written” (see grammar).
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 to at least amend it to grammophone, it was replaced by record player after mid-1950s.