Word.ws English Dictionary

trimphone

trimphone noun: a luxury telephone of the 1960s with a then-innovative electronic ringer and illuminated dial.

trimphone: a luxury telephone of the 1960s with a then-innovative electronic ringer and illuminated dial
Image: Suttonpubcrawl, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

trimphone (plural trimphones)

  1. (UK) A luxury telephone of the 1960s with a then-innovative electronic ringer and illuminated dial.
    • Song thrushes normally have a large song repertoire, and Slater suggests that the trimphone sound has been taken up because it is sufficiently similar to the normal songs to be learned and imitated[…]1983 April 14, New Scientist, volume 98, number 1353
    • While an acoustic coupler can be used with ordinary telephones, it cannot be used with modern trimphones[…]1986, Barry Strickland-Hodge, Barbara Allan, Medical information: a profile, page 54

Forms of trimphone

pluraltrimphones

Origin of trimphone

From trim + phone, originally a trademark, with trim explained as Tone Ring Illuminator Model.

Questions about trimphone

What does trimphone mean?
Trimphone means a luxury telephone of the 1960s with a then-innovative electronic ringer and illuminated dial.
What part of speech is trimphone?
Trimphone is a noun.
What is the plural of trimphone?
The plural of trimphone is trimphones.

Words near trimphone in the dictionary

  1. trimotored
  2. trimotors
  3. trimount
  4. trimounts
  5. trimoxazole
  6. trimphone
  7. trimphones
  8. trimpot
  9. trimpots
  10. trims
  11. trims down to size

Source and license

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