microphone

micro- +‎ -phone

• IPA^(key): /maɪ.kɹoʊ.foʊn/

microphone (plural microphones)

A microphone.

1. A device (transducer) used to convert sound waves into a varying electric current; normally fed into an amplifier and either recorded or broadcast.
   • 1965: Charles McDowell, Campaign Fever: The National Folk Festival, from New Hampshire to November, 1964, page 11 (Morrow)

     Behind the tangled garden of microphones that had sprouted on the lectern, Goldwater spoke softly and casually about his family.

   • 1967: Roderick MacLeish, The Sun Stood Still, page 41 (Atheneum)

     Above them, speaking over a steel garden of microphones, the agitator sweated and scowled out into the darkening street.

   • 2002: Laura Lippman, In a Strange City, page 71 (HarperCollins; →ISBN, 9780380810239)

     […] between the huge Depression-era horses on the plaza opposite City Hall — and Rainer was completely focused on them as they moved toward the podium and the little garden of microphones that had sprouted there. The Hilliards walked stiffly, as if they had been in a car accident.

   • 2005: Tom Stanton, Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America, page 177 (HarperCollins; →ISBN, 9780060722906)

     Aaron perched himself on a wooden folding chair behind a garden of microphones and beamed as he answered questions. Sure, he was disappointed.

   • 2006: Tim Miller and Glen Johnson, 1001 Beds: Performances, Essays, and Travels, page 109 (University of Wisconsin Press; →ISBN, 9780299216948)

     Walking back down the marble stairs, which now felt more like I was leaving Principal Lambas’s office than the Forum in Rome, Holly, Karen, and I made our way to a garden of microphones for the press conference. I was dreading having to say something.

   • 2009: Caroline B. Cooney, If the Witness Lied, page 53 (Random House Children’s Books; →ISBN, 9780385734486)

     […] garden of microphones, which stuck up like metal flowers in her face.

• The collective noun for several microphones (such as can be observed at a press conference) is a garden of microphones.

• (transducer of sound waves to electricity): mic, mike

• multimicrophone

• Lao: ໄມໂຄຣໂຟນ (mai khōn fōn)

microphone (third-person singular simple present microphones, present participle microphoning, simple past and past participle microphoned)

1. (transitive) To put one or more microphones on or in.

• mike, mike up, bug (if covert), wire up

• neomorphic, pheromonic

micro- +‎ -phone.

• IPA^(key): /mi.kʁɔ.fɔn/

microphone m (plural microphones)

1. Microphone.

• (microphone): micro

• “microphone” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).