Word.ws English Dictionary

988

988 proper noun: the telephone number for the suicide prevention lifeline in the United States and Canada.

988: the telephone number for the suicide prevention lifeline in the United States and Canada
Image: 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

988

  1. The telephone number for the suicide prevention lifeline in the United States and Canada.
    • Many still assume that “you call 988 and — much like 911 — that means someone is going to be dispatched to you,” said Hannah Wesolowski, NAMI’s chief advocacy officer. “For the vast majority — almost all callers — that’s not actually the case.”2023 July 13, Christina Caron, “Is the New 988 Suicide Hotline Working?”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 14 Jul 2023
    • The 988 network has been a rare instance of bipartisanship in federal health policy. President Donald J. Trump in 2020 signed the law establishing the new number, and the Biden administration has implemented the number and expanded a network of more than 200 call centers, which typically operate...2024 July 16, Noah Weiland, “Crisis Hotline Has Answered 10 Million Calls, Texts and Chats”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 16 Jul 2024

Examples of 988 in a sentence

  • The 988 network has been a rare instance of bipartisanship in federal health policy.2024 July 16, Noah Weiland, “Crisis Hotline Has Answered 10 Million Calls, Texts and Chats”, in The New York Times, archived from the...
  • Increasing access to mental health services in remote and rural areas, where suicide rates tend to be higher, is a priority, and the 988 hotline is a useful bridge to those communities, Dr.2024 December 7, Vjosa Isai, “Canada’s 988 Crisis Hotline, a ‘Pathway to Survival,’ One Year Later”, in The New York Times, archived from...

Words formed from 988

Questions about 988

What does 988 mean?
988 means the telephone number for the suicide prevention lifeline in the United States and Canada.
How do you use 988 in a sentence?
The 988 network has been a rare instance of bipartisanship in federal health policy.
What part of speech is 988?
988 is a proper noun.

Words near 988 in the dictionary

  1. 96-gon
  2. 96-gons
  3. 96th
  4. 976
  5. 97th
  6. 988
  7. 988twt
  8. 98th
  9. 99
  10. 99 percent
  11. 99 problems

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 988 (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “988.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/988. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.