gramophone

Everyday

An old machine for playing music from records, flat discs with grooves, often with a big horn to make the sound louder. tree →

In the lessons

In history lessons gramophones show how people listened to music before radio, cassettes, CDs and streaming. In old stories families gather round the gramophone. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, and Emile Berliner the gramophone with flat discs. Phrases: wind up the gramophone, a gramophone record.

Examples

• Great-grandma danced to music on the gramophone. tree →
• You had to wind up the gramophone by hand. tree →
• The museum has a gramophone with a huge brass horn. tree →
• Gramophone records were made of shellac and broke easily. tree →
• In the film, an old gramophone played in the empty house. tree →
• The gramophone came before the record player. tree →

Note

Plural: gramophones. «ph» sounds like f: GRAM-uh-fone. In American English «phonograph» is the more common old word; modern word: record player or turntable.