Word.ws English Dictionary

tannoy

/ˈtænɔɪ/

tannoy noun: a public address system.

Noun

tannoy (plural tannoys)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, colloquial) A public address system.
    • Although the supermarket tannoy was bravely broadcasting Rigoletto, its meat counter was thick with wurst and its wine shelves loaded with Liebfraumilch.1987, Christina Hardyment, “Harlekins and Gondolas”, in Heidi’s Alp: One Family’s Search for Storybook Europe, Book Club edition, New York, N.Y.: The Atlantic Monthly Press, →OCLC, page 163
    • Terry Putnam, from Weymouth, adds: "Riding home from Bristol a few days ago, as we approached Weymouth the guard announced over the tannoy 'The next station is Weymouth - please remember to take all your luggage and children with you...'"2020 August 12, “Stop & Examine”, in Rail, page 70

Verb

tannoy (third-person singular simple present tannoys, present participle tannoying, simple past and past participle tannoyed)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, ambitransitive) To transmit, or communicate with, by means of a public address system.

Forms of tannoy

Noun
pluraltannoys
Verb
third-person singular presenttannoys
present participletannoying
past participletannoyed
pasttannoyed

Origin of tannoy

A genericised trademark of Tannoy Ltd, a manufacturer of public address systems. "Tannoy" is a syllabic abbreviation of tantalum + alloy, which was the material used in a type of electrolytic rectifier developed by the company.

Questions about tannoy

What does tannoy mean?
Tannoy means a public address system.
What part of speech is tannoy?
Tannoy can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce tannoy?
Tannoy is pronounced /ˈtænɔɪ/.
What is the plural of tannoy?
The plural of tannoy is tannoys.

Words near tannoy in the dictionary

  1. tannosal
  2. tannosome
  3. tannosomes
  4. tannour
  5. tannours
  6. tannoy
  7. tannoyed
  8. tannoying
  9. tannoys
  10. Tannu Tuva
  11. Tannu-Tuva

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tannoy (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-tannoy.wav.

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