call
EnglishEdit
EtymologyEdit
From Middle English callen, from Old English ceallian (“to call, shout”) and Old Norse kalla (“to call; shout; refer to as; name”); both from Proto-Germanic *kalzōną (“to call, shout”), from Proto-Indo-European *gal(o)s-, *glōs-, *golH-so- (“voice, cry”). Cognate with Scots call, caw, ca (“to call, cry, shout”), Dutch kallen (“to chat, talk”), German dialectal kallen (“to talk; talk loudly or too much”), Swedish kalla (“to call, refer to, beckon”), Norwegian kalle (“to call, name”), Icelandic kalla (“to call, shout, name”), Welsh galw (“to call, demand”), Polish głos (“voice”), Lithuanian gal̃sas (“echo”), Russian голос (golos, “voice”), Albanian gjuhë (“language, tongue”).
PronunciationEdit
- (Received Pronunciation) enPR: kôl, IPA(key): /kɔːɫ/, [kʰoɫ],
Audio (RP) (file) - (General American) IPA(key): /kɔl/, [kʰɔɫ]
Audio (GA) (file) - (US, cot–caught merger) IPA(key): /kɑɫ/, [kʰɑɫ]
Audio (AU) (file) - Homophone: coll (with the cot-caught merger)
- Rhymes: -ɔːl
NounEdit
call (plural calls)
- A telephone conversation; a phone call.
- I received several phone calls today.
- I received several calls today.
- An instance of calling someone on the telephone.
- I made a call to Jim, but he didn't answer.
- A short visit, usually for social purposes.
- I paid a call to a dear friend of mine.
- 1785, William Cowper, “Book I. The Sofa.”, in The Task, a Poem, […], London: […] J[oseph] Johnson; […], OCLC 228757725, pages 13–14:
- He [...] ſeldom waits, / Dependent on the baker's punctual call, / To hear his creaking panniers at the door, / Angry and ſad and his laſt cruſt conſumed.
- (nautical) A visit by a ship or boat to a port.
- The ship made a call at Southampton.
- A cry or shout.
- He heard a call from the other side of the room.
- A decision or judgement.
- That was a good call.
- The characteristic cry of a bird or other animal.
- That sound is the distinctive call of the cuckoo bird.
- A beckoning or summoning.
- I had to yield to the call of the wild.
- 1711 October 8, Joseph Addison; Richard Steele, “THURSDAY, September 27, 1711 [Julian calendar]”, in The Spectator, number 181; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume II, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, OCLC 191120697, page 440:
- Dependance is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity, than any other motive whatsoever.
- 1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XXIII, in Lady Trevelyan (Hannah More Macaulay), editor, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume V, London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, OCLC 1069526323, page 117:
- But they had hoped that, when peace had been restored, when no call of duty required him [William III of England] to cross the sea, he would generally, during the summer and autumn, reside in his fair palaces and parks on the banks of the Thames, [...]
- 2007, Latina, volume 11, page 101:
- We actually have a call tomorrow, which is a Sunday, right after my bridal shower. I have to make enchiladas for 10 people!
- The right to speak at a given time during a debate or other public event; the floor.
- The Prime Minister has the call.
- I give the call to the Manager of Opposition Business.
- (finance) An option to buy stock at a specified price during or at a specified time.
- (cricket) The act of calling to the other batsman.
- (cricket) The state of being the batsman whose role it is to call (depends on where the ball goes.)
- A work shift which requires one to be available when requested (see on call).
- 1978, Alan E. Nourse, The Practice,[1] Harper & Row, →ISBN:
- page 48: “Mondays would be great, especially after a weekend of call.”
- page 56: “[...] I’ve got call tonight, and all weekend, but I’ll be off tomorrow to help you some.”
- 2007, William D. Bailey, You Will Never Run out of Jesus, CrossHouse Publishing, →ISBN:
- page 29: I took general-surgery call at Bossier Medical Center and asked special permission to take general-medical call, which was gladly given away by the older staff members: [...]. You would be surprised at how many surgical cases came out of medical call.
- page 206: My first night of primary medical call was greeted about midnight with a very ill 30-year-old lady who had a temperature of 103 degrees.
- 2008, Jamal M. Bullocks [et al.], Plastic Surgery Emergencies: Principles and Techniques, Thieme, →ISBN, page ix:
- We attempted to include all topics that we ourselves have faced while taking plastic surgery call at the affiliated hospitals in the Texas Medical Center, one of the largest medical centers in the world, which sees over 100,000 patients per day.
- 2009, Steven Louis Shelley, A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting, page 171:
- The columns in the second rectangle show fewer hours, but part of that is due to the fact that there's a division between a work call and a show call.
- 1978, Alan E. Nourse, The Practice,[1] Harper & Row, →ISBN:
- (computing) The act of jumping to a subprogram, saving the means to return to the original point.
- A statement of a particular state, or rule, made in many games such as bridge, craps, jacks, and so on.
- There was a 20 dollar bet on the table, and my call was 9.
- (poker) The act of matching a bet made by a player who has previously bet in the same round of betting.
- A note blown on the horn to encourage the dogs in a hunt.
- (nautical) A whistle or pipe, used by the boatswain and his mate to summon the sailors to duty.
- A pipe or other instrument to call birds or animals by imitating their note or cry. A game call.
- An invitation to take charge of or serve a church as its pastor.
- (archaic) Vocation; employment; calling.
- (US, law) A reference to, or statement of, an object, course, distance, or other matter of description in a survey or grant requiring or calling for a corresponding object, etc., on the land.
- (informal, slang, prostitution) A meeting with a client for paid sex; hookup; job.
- 2015 March 3, Lyda Longa, “Internet hookups mean fewer prostitutes on Daytona’s streets, police say”, in The Daytona Beach News-Journal[2], Daytona Beach, Fla.:
- "They have a little network of women that watch out for each other," Morford said. That means that if one prostitute doesn't come back after going out on a call – whether it's an Internet prostitute or a streetwalker – and the other women can't get hold of her, they get scared, close up shop and won't work, Morford said.
HyponymsEdit
- altar call
- bird call
- booty call
- broker's call
- bugle call
- calendar call
- cat call
- cold call
- collect call
- conference call
- courtesy call
- crank call
- curtain call
- distress call
- forecall
- function call
- house call
- mail call
- margin call
- missed call
- money call
- naked call
- nuisance call
- phone call
- prank call
- put-call
- roll call
- self-call
- service call
- sick call
- tail call
- telephone call
- toll call
- uncovered call
- wake-up call
Derived termsEdit
Related termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
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VerbEdit
call (third-person singular simple present calls, present participle calling, simple past and past participle called or call'd)
- To use one's voice.
- (intransitive) To request, summon, or beckon.
- That person is hurt; call for help!
- 1684, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress. From This World to That which is to Come: The Second Part. […], London: […] Nathaniel Ponder […], OCLC 752743029; reprinted in The Pilgrim’s Progress as Originally Published by John Bunyan: Being a Fac-simile Reproduction of the First Edition, London: Elliot Stock […], 1875, OCLC 222146756, page 128:
- So they called for Rooms; and he ſhewed them one for Christiana and her Children and Mercy, and another for Mr. Great-heart and the old Gentleman.
- (intransitive) To cry or shout.
- 1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, Much Adoe about Nothing. […], quarto edition, London: […] V[alentine] S[immes] for Andrew Wise, and William Aspley, published 1600, OCLC 932921146, [Act III, scene iii]:
- If you heare a child crie in the night you must call to the nurſe and bid her ſtil it.
- 1902, Rudyard Kipling, “How the Alphabet was Made”, in Just So Stories: For Little Children, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, OCLC 1705274, stanza 5, page 169:
- For far—oh, very far behind, / So far she cannot call to him, / Comes Tegumai alone to find / The daughter that was all to him!
- (transitive) To utter in a loud or distinct voice.
- to call the roll of a military company
- 1714, J[ohn] Gay, “Saturday; or, The Flights”, in The Shepherd’s Week. In Six Pastorals, London: […] R. Burleigh […], OCLC 22942401, lines 47–50, page 56:
- Not ballad-ſinger plac'd above the croud, / Sings with a note ſo ſhrilling ſweet and loud, / Nor pariſh clerk who calls the pſalm ſo clear, / Like Bowzybeus ſooths th' attentive ear.
- (transitive, intransitive) To contact by telephone.
- Why don’t you call me in the morning? Why don’t you call tomorrow?
- (transitive) To declare in advance.
- The captains call the coin toss.
- To rouse from sleep; to awaken.
- 1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act II, scene ii], page 376, column 2:
- Take not away the Taper, leaue it burning: / And if thou canſt awake by foure o'th'clock, / I prythee call me: Sleepe hath ceiz'd me wholly.
- To declare (an effort or project) to be a failure.
- After the third massive failure, John called the whole initiative.
- (intransitive) To request, summon, or beckon.
- (heading, intransitive) To visit.
- To pay a (social) visit (often used with "on", "round", or "at"; used by salespeople with "again" to invite customers to come again).
- We could always call on a friend. The engineer called round whilst you were away.
- a. 1700, William Temple, “Of Health and Long-life”, in Miscellanea. The Third Part. [...], London: […] Jonathan Swift, […] Benjamin Tooke, […], published 1701, OCLC 23640974, page 127:
- [...] He ordered Her to call at His Houſe once a Week, which She did for ſome Time; after which He heard no more of Her.
- 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., OCLC 222716698, page 58:
- The Celebrity, by arts unknown, induced Mrs. Judge Short and two other ladies to call at Mohair on a certain afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the track.
- To stop at a station or port.
- This train calls at Reading, Slough and London Paddington. Our cruise ship called at Bristol Harbour.
- To pay a (social) visit (often used with "on", "round", or "at"; used by salespeople with "again" to invite customers to come again).
- To name, identify or describe.
- (ditransitive) To name or refer to.
- Why don’t we dispense with the formalities. Please call me Al.
- 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 7, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, OL 5535161W:
- I don't know how you and the 'head,' as you call him, will get on, but I do know that if you call my duds a 'livery' again there'll be trouble. It's bad enough to go around togged out like a life saver on a drill day, but I can stand that 'cause I'm paid for it. What I won't stand is to have them togs called a livery.
- 1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart; Avery Hopwood, “The Shadow of the Bat”, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, OCLC 20230794, page 6:
- The Bat—they called him the Bat. Like a bat he chose the night hours for his work of rapine; like a bat he struck and vanished, pouncingly, noiselessly; like a bat he never showed himself to the face of the day.
- 2013 June 28, Joris Luyendijk, “Our banks are out of control”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 3, page 21:
- But the scandals kept coming, and so we entered stage three–what therapists call "bargaining". A broad section of the political class now recognises the need for change but remains unable to see the necessity of a fundamental overhaul. Instead it offers fixes and patches.
- (in passive) Of a person, to have as one's name; of a thing, to have as its name.
- I’m called John. A very tall building is called a skyscraper.
- 2013 September-October, Henry Petroski, “The Evolution of Eyeglasses”, in American Scientist:
- The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone, essentially what today we might term a frameless magnifying glass or plain glass paperweight.
- (transitive) To predict.
- He called twelve of the last three recessions.
- To state, or estimate, approximately or loosely; to characterize without strict regard to fact.
- They call the distance ten miles. That's enough work. Let's call it a day and go home.
- 1842, Henry Brougham, Political Philosophy:
- The whole army is called 700,000 men
- (obsolete) To disclose the class or character of; to identify.
- c. 1608–1610, Francis Beaumont; John Fletcher, “Philaster: Or, Love Lies a Bleeding”, in Fifty Comedies and Tragedies. […], [part 1], London: […] J[ohn] Macock [and H. Hills], for John Martyn, Henry Herringman, and Richard Marriot, published 1679, OCLC 1015511273, Act I, scene i, page 22, column 2:
- This ſpeech calls him Spaniard, being nothing but / A large inventory of his own commendations.
- (ditransitive) To name or refer to.
- (heading, sports) Direct or indirect use of the voice.
- (cricket) (of a batsman): To shout directions to the other batsman on whether or not they should take a run.
- (baseball, cricket) (of a fielder): To shout to other fielders that he intends to take a catch (thus avoiding collisions).
- (intransitive, poker) To equal the same amount that other players are currently betting.
- I bet $800 and Jane raised to $1600. My options: call (match her $1600 bet), reraise or fold.
- (intransitive, poker, proscribed) To match the current bet amount, in preparation for a raise in the same turn. (Usually, players are forbidden to announce one's play this way.)
- I’ll call your 300, and raise to 600!
- (transitive) To state, or invoke a rule, in many games such as bridge, craps, jacks, and so on.
- My partner called two spades.
- (transitive, sometimes with for) To require, demand.
- He felt called to help the old man.
- 1910, Emerson Hough, “The Gateway, and Some Who Passed”, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 639762314, page 29:
- Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations.
- (transitive, finance) To announce the early extinction of a debt by prepayment, usually at a premium.
- (transitive, banking) To demand repayment of a loan.
- (transitive, computing) To jump to (another part of a program) to perform some operation, returning to the original point on completion.
- A recursive function is one that calls itself.
- This term needs a definition. Please help out and add a definition, then remove the text
{{rfdef}}
.- 1968 December 8, Henry Cosby; Sylvia Moy; Stevie Wonder (lyrics and music), “I’d Be a Fool Right Now”, in For Once in My Life, performed by Stevie Wonder:
- They say your love will surely fade girl / When things go wrong and trouble calls
SynonymsEdit
- (cry or shout): holler, yell; see also Thesaurus:shout
- (contact by telephone): drop a line, ring; see also Thesaurus:telephone
- (rouse from sleep): wake up; see also Thesaurus:awaken
- (name or refer to): designate, dub, name; see also Thesaurus:denominate
- (predict): augur, foretell; see also Thesaurus:predict
Derived termsEdit
- becall
- call after
- call again
- call a spade a spade
- call back
- call by
- call down
- call for
- call in
- calling
- call into question
- call it a day
- call it quits
- call off
- call on
- call out
- call round
- call someone's bluff
- call the shots
- call the tune
- call time
- call to account
- call to the Bar
- call up
- call upon
- miscall
- withcall
TranslationsEdit
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
CatalanEdit
PronunciationEdit
Etymology 1Edit
From Latin callis (“alley, narrow street, passageway”)
NounEdit
call m (plural calls)
Etymology 2Edit
NounEdit
call m (uncountable)
Derived termsEdit
Etymology 3Edit
Borrowed from Hebrew קָהָל (qahál, “assembly, synagogue”).
NounEdit
call m (plural calls)
Further readingEdit
- “call” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
IrishEdit
Etymology 1Edit
(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)
Alternative formsEdit
NounEdit
call m (genitive singular call)
DeclensionEdit
Bare forms (no plural of this noun)
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Forms with the definite article
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Derived termsEdit
- gan chall (“needlessly”)
Etymology 2Edit
PronunciationEdit
NounEdit
call m (genitive singular caill)
DeclensionEdit
Bare forms (no plural of this noun)
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Forms with the definite article:
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MutationEdit
Irish mutation | ||
---|---|---|
Radical | Lenition | Eclipsis |
call | chall | gcall |
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs. |
Further readingEdit
- "call" in Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla, An Gúm, 1977, by Niall Ó Dónaill.
- Entries containing “call” in English-Irish Dictionary, An Gúm, 1959, by Tomás de Bhaldraithe.
- Entries containing “call” in New English-Irish Dictionary by Foras na Gaeilge.
Scottish GaelicEdit
NounEdit
call m (genitive singular calla, plural callaidhean)
Derived termsEdit
MutationEdit
Scottish Gaelic mutation | |
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Radical | Lenition |
call | chall |
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs. |
WelshEdit
AdjectiveEdit
call (feminine singular call, plural call, equative called, comparative callach, superlative callaf)
Derived termsEdit
MutationEdit
Welsh mutation | |||
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radical | soft | nasal | aspirate |
call | gall | nghall | chall |
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs. |