answerphone

A telephone containing a built-in device for recording incoming callers’ messages for later retrieval.

Noun

  1. A telephone containing a built-in device for recording incoming callers’ messages for later retrieval.
    • I keep trying to call her, but all I get is the answerphone.
    • It started with a message in my office on that fiendish modern invention, second in its monstrousness only to the television, the answerphone. - 2012, Theodore Dalrymple, If Symptoms Persist:

Origin

From answer + (tele)phone.

Forms

answerphones ansaphone ansafone answer phone

Synonyms

answering machine