: a tone emitted by a telephone as a signal that the system is ready for dialing
Examples of dial tone in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the WebFor five months, the spacecraft transmitted unusable data equivalent to a dial tone.—IEEE Spectrum, 6 May 2024 When the lights go out and the cell phones go dark, that click and dial tone are often the last resort.—Mercury News & East Bay Times Editorial Boards, The Mercury News, 9 Mar. 2024 In Protest Trump Defeats Haley In Michigan Republican Primary—On Track To Clinch Nomination Next Month
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Decades ago, people paid for a dial tone.—Pete Bernard, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2024 The Free Press found two pay phones in the lobby of the 36th District Court in Detroit, but couldn't get a dial tone on either one.—Paul Egan, Detroit Free Press, 5 Jan. 2024 OpenAI’s Sora has made that problem seem as antiquated as a modem’s dial tone.—Kylie Robison, Fortune, 15 Feb. 2024 His 20 albums range from glam rock forerunner (Transformer, produced by David Bowie) to tragic rock opera (Berlin) to instrumental saw blade and dial tone (Metal Machine Music) to sincere pop schmaltz (Set the Twilight Reeling).—Jeremy Lybarger, The New Republic, 17 Oct. 2023 The phone on Ninetieth Street had a dial tone.—Zach Helfand, The New Yorker, 28 May 2022 Or the dial tone of creation.—Los Angeles Times, 3 Nov. 2021
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dial tone.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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