Word.ws English Dictionary

phone number

phone number is the clipping of telephone number.

Meaning of telephone number

Noun

telephone number (plural telephone numbers)

  1. The sequence of digits used to identify a particular destination telephone in a network.
    • Well, that story satisfied old O’Herrin’s curiosity. But he wanted to know the fairy’s telephone number, and when Zobedee fetched her fairylets in by burning a lot of hair, while the grand vizier and the boss eunuch held their noses, he asked her to change the spaniels back into women.1902, J[ames] W[infield] Scott, “The Porter and the Ladies of Bagdad”, in Jack Hardin’s Rendering of the Arabian Nights: Being a New Translation in Up-to-Date English […], Boston, Mass.: Herbert B....
  2. (figuratively, humorous, in plural) A large number.
    • How much is that Rolls Royce? We are talking telephone numbers.
    Synonyms:
    phone number

Forms of phone number

pluralphone numbers
alternative form (dated)'phone number

Questions about phone number

What is phone number the clipping of?
Phone number is the clipping of telephone number.

Words near phone number in the dictionary

  1. phone jails
  2. phone line
  3. phone lines
  4. phone monkey
  5. phone monkeys
  6. phone number
  7. phone numbers
  8. phone sex
  9. phone survey
  10. phone surveys
  11. phone tag

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: phone number (page history and authors); telephone number (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-phone number.ogg.

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