prank call

prank call noun: a practical joke played by calling the unsuspecting victim on the telephone, usually pretending to be somebody else.

Noun

prank call (plural prank calls)

A practical joke played by calling the unsuspecting victim on the telephone, usually pretending to be somebody else.
- Until noon only 251 prank calls to the Bronx Zoo had been sifted out, compared with the day-long total of 3352 on April 1, 1960. The pranksters would call Wellington 3-1500 to talk with a "Mr. Fox" (or Lyon, Bear or Wolf).1961 April 2, “April Fool Phone Calls Decline Sharply in City”, in New York Times, page 87
Synonyms:

crank call

prank call (third-person singular simple present prank calls, present participle prank calling, simple past and past participle prank called)

(transitive) To call (an unsuspecting person) on the telephone as a practical joke.

practical joke made by calling victim on the telephone: اِتِّصَال مَقْلَب ittiṣāl maqlab

Noun
plural	prank calls
Verb
third-person singular present	prank calls
present participle	prank calling
past participle	prank called
past	prank called

What does prank call mean?: Prank call means a practical joke played by calling the unsuspecting victim on the telephone, usually pretending to be somebody else.
What is prank call in Arabic?: Prank call in Arabic is اِتِّصَال مَقْلَب (ittiṣāl maqlab). See Prank call meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is prank call?: Prank call can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of prank call?: The plural of prank call is prank calls.

Adapted from Wiktionary: prank call (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: 2026-09-02

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