Word.ws English Dictionary

French telephone

French telephone noun: a telephone with a handset.

Noun

French telephone (plural French telephones)

  1. (US, dated) A telephone with a handset.
    • An act prohibiting telephone corporations of this Commonwealth from imposing, for the use of hand telephones commonly called 'French telephones,' a charge in excess of fifteen cents per month […]1933, Pennsylvania. General Assembly. Senate, Journal (part 1, page 281)
    • Rotary dials also were used on the so-called "French" telephones introduced in Europe at first and then the United States in the late 1920s.1999, Rudi Voti, The Facts On File Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society, page 1012

Forms of French telephone

pluralFrench telephones

Origin of French telephone

In the early 20th century, telephones with handsets were not common in the United States. Many American soldiers encountered them in France during World War I.

Questions about French telephone

What does French telephone mean?
French telephone means a telephone with a handset.
What part of speech is French telephone?
French telephone is a noun.
What is the plural of French telephone?
The plural of French telephone is French telephones.

Words near French telephone in the dictionary

  1. French stick
  2. French sticks
  3. French Sudan
  4. French taco
  5. French tacos
  6. French telephone
  7. French telephones
  8. French terries
  9. French Territory of the Afars and the Issas
  10. French terry
  11. French thyme

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: French telephone (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: “French telephone.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/french_telephone. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.