Word.ws English Dictionary

white telephone

white telephone noun: italian light-comedy and melodramatic films from the Fascist period.

Noun

white telephone (countable and uncountable, plural white telephones)

  1. (derogatory) Italian light-comedy and melodramatic films from the Fascist period.
  2. (derogatory, often) Films of other nations that share a nonseriousness of tone and disconnection from reality with the Italian films.

Adjective

white telephone (comparative more white telephone, superlative most white telephone)

  1. (derogatory, often) Characteristic of the Italian genre of film, white telephone; a sense of consequence-free lives of privilege.

Forms of white telephone

Noun
pluralwhite telephones
Adjective
comparativemore white telephone
superlativemost white telephone
alternative formwhite-telephone

Origin of white telephone

Calque of Italian telefoni bianchi.

Questions about white telephone

What does white telephone mean?
White telephone means italian light-comedy and melodramatic films from the Fascist period.
What part of speech is white telephone?
White telephone can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of white telephone?
The plural of white telephone is white telephones.

Words near white telephone in the dictionary

  1. white teak
  2. white teaks
  3. white tears
  4. white teas
  5. white teatfish
  6. white telephone
  7. white telephones
  8. white tern
  9. white terns
  10. white terror
  11. white terrors

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: white 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.

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