payphone

See also: pay phone

English

Alternative forms

• pay phone

Etymology

pay +‎ phone.

Noun

payphone (plural payphones)

1. A public telephone that requires prepayment to operate, generally via the insertion of coins or a credit card.

   I only had ten cents in my pocket, so I couldn't use the payphone to call a cab.

   • 2020, “Kyoto”, in Punisher, performed by Phoebe Bridgers:

     You called me from a payphone / They still got payphones / It costs a dollar a minute / To tell me you're getting sober

Synonyms

• tickey box (South Africa)

Related terms

• telephone booth, telephone box, telephone kiosk

Translations

a public telephone

• Armenian: տաքսաֆոն (hy) (takʿsafon)
• Bulgarian: телефонен автомат (telefonen avtomat)
• Catalan: telèfon públic m
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 公用電話／公用电话 (zh) (gōngyòng diànhuà)

• Danish: mønttelefon (da) c
• Finnish: rahapuhelin, yleisöpuhelin (fi)
• German: Münztelefon (de) n, Münzfernsprecher (de) m
• Hungarian: nyilvános telefon (hu)
• Indonesian: telepon umum
• Irish: táillefón m
• Japanese: 公衆電話 (ja) (こうしゅうでんわ, kōshū denwa)
• Korean: 공중전화(公衆電話) (ko) (gongjungjeonhwa)
• Polish: telefon samoinkasujący m, automat telefoniczny m, automat (pl) m
• Russian: таксофо́н (ru) m (taksofón), телефо́н-автома́т (ru) m (telefón-avtomát), обще́ственный телефо́н m (obščéstvennyj telefón)
• Spanish: teléfono público m
• Ukrainian: таксофо́н (uk) m (taksofón)
• Welsh: ffôn talu m

See also

• call collect
• COCOT
• coin-op
• collect call
• drop a dime

 

Further reading

• payphone on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• hypopnea