Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A machine that reproduces sound by means of a stylus in contact with a grooved rotating disk.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To register or record by means of the phonograph.
  • noun A type or character for expressing a sound; a character used in phonography.
  • noun A form of phonautograph, the invention of Thomas A. Edison, by means of which sounds are made to produce on a register permanent tracings, each having an individual character corresponding to the sound producing it. The sounds can be afterward reproduced from the register.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A character or symbol used to represent a sound, esp. one used in phonography.
  • noun (Physics) An instrument for the mechanical registration and reproduction of audible sounds, as articulate speech, etc. It consists of a rotating cylinder or disk covered with some material easily indented, as tinfoil, wax, paraffin, etc., above which is a thin plate carrying a stylus. As the plate vibrates under the influence of a sound, the stylus makes minute indentations or undulations in the soft material, and these, when the cylinder or disk is again turned, set the plate in vibration, and reproduce the sound.
  • noun an instrument for reproducing sounds, especially music, previously recorded on a plastic cylinder or disk as a pattern of bumps or wiggles in a groove. A needle (stylus) held in the groove is made to vibrate by motion (rotation) of the recording, and the vibrations caused by the bumps and wiggles are transmitted directly to a membrane, or first to an electronic amplifier circuit, thereby reproducing with greater or less fidelity the original sounds. A phonograph which is equipped with electronics enabling the playback of sound with high fidelity to the original is often called a hi-fi.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Literally, a device that captures sound waves onto an engraved archive; a lathe.
  • noun UK, historical A device that records or plays sound from cylinder records.
  • noun North America A turntable, especially an early, archaic record player.
  • noun dated A character or symbol used to represent a sound, especially one used in phonography.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun machine in which rotating records cause a stylus to vibrate and the vibrations are amplified acoustically or electronically

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From phono- + -graph.

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