Join free

Call

AI In plain words

Writing a short explanation…

Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.

call¹

  • /kɔːl/ UK
  • [kʰoɫ] UK
  • /koːl/ British, Southern, Standard
  • /kɔl/ Scotland
  • /kaːl/ Northumbria
  • /kɔl/ US
  • [kʰɔɫ] US
  • /kɑl/ US, cot caught merger
  • [kʰɑɫ] US
  • /kɒl/ Canada
  • /koːl/ Australia, New Zealand

Sounds like coll (cot–caught merger), caw (l-vocalization) · Rhymes with -ɔːl

Where it comes from

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *gels-der.

Proto-Indo-European *golsos

Proto-Germanic *kalzazder.

Proto-Germanic *kalzōną

Proto-West Germanic *kalʀōn

Old English cealliander.

Old English *callian

Middle English callen

English call

From Middle English callen, from Old English ċeallian (“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 *golH-so- (“voice, cry”), from *gel(H)- (“to vocalize, call, shout”).

Cognates

* Scots call, caw, ca (“to call, cry, shout”)

* Dutch kallen (“to chat, talk”)

* German Low German kallen (“to speak, talk”)

* German kallen (“to call”)

* Swedish kalla (“to call, refer to, beckon”)

* Norwegian kalle (“to call, name”)

* Danish kalde (“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”).

verb calls · calling · called · call'd

  1. intransitive To request, summon, or beckon. That person is hurt; call for help!
  2. intransitive To cry or shout. "Supper's ready," called Dad from the kitchen.
  3. transitive To utter in a loud or distinct voice. to call the roll of a military company
  4. ambitransitive To contact by telephone. Why don’t you call me in the morning?
  5. transitive To rouse from sleep; to awaken. 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.
  6. transitive To request that one's band play (a particular tune). They called I Got Rhythm, and turned to me again for a solo, and I said what?
  7. Yorkshire, transitive To scold. CALL 1 scold
  8. intransitive 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.
  9. intransitive To stop at a station or port. This train calls at Reading, Slough and London Paddington.
  10. intransitive To come to pass; to afflict. They say your love will surely fade, girl, / When things go wrong and trouble calls.
  11. ditransitive To name or refer to. Why don’t we dispense with the formalities? Please call me Al.
  12. Of a person, to have as one's name; of a thing, to have as its name. I’m called John.
  13. To state, or estimate, approximately or loosely; to characterize without strict regard to fact. They call the distance ten miles.
  14. transitive To claim the existence of some malfeasance; to denounce as. I call bullshit.
  15. obsolete To disclose the class or character of; to identify. This ſpeech calls him Spaniard, being nothing but / A large inventory of his own commendations.
  16. transitive To declare in advance. The captains call the coin toss.
  17. transitive To predict. He called twelve of the last three recessions.
  18. transitive To formally recognise a death: especially to announce and record the time, place and fact of a person’s death. “Let’s call it. Time of death, 08:45.” The respiratory therapist stopped bagging. The doctor stopped CPR. There was no heartbeat on the monitor. Michael was dead.
  19. To declare (an effort or project) to be a failure. After the third massive failure, John called the whole initiative.
  20. To make a decision as a referee or umpire. The goal was called offside.
  21. (of a batsman): To shout directions to the other batsman on whether or not they should take a run.
  22. (of a fielder): To shout to other fielders that he intends to take a catch (thus avoiding collisions).
  23. To tell in advance which shot one is attempting. Every shot must be called.
  24. intransitive 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.
  25. intransitive, 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!
  26. transitive To state, or invoke a rule, in many games such as bridge, craps, jacks, and so on. My partner called two spades.
  27. sometimes, transitive To require, demand. He felt called to help the old man.
  28. transitive To cause to be verbally subjected to. 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.
  29. colloquial, transitive To lay claim to an object or role which is up for grabs. I call the comfy chair!
  30. transitive To announce the early extinction of a debt by prepayment, usually at a premium.
  31. transitive To demand repayment of a loan.
  32. transitive 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.

noun calls

  1. countable, uncountable A cry or shout. He heard a call from the other side of the room.
  2. countable, uncountable The characteristic cry of a bird or other animal. That sound is the distinctive call of the cuckoo bird.
  3. countable, uncountable A beckoning or summoning. I had to yield to the call of the wild.
  4. countable, uncountable A telephone conversation; a phone call. I received several phone calls today.
  5. countable, uncountable An instance of calling someone on the telephone. I made a call to Jim, but he didn’t answer.
  6. countable, uncountable A short visit, usually for social purposes. I paid a call to a dear friend of mine.
  7. countable, uncountable A visit by a ship or boat to a port. The ship made a call at Southampton.
  8. countable, uncountable A decision or judgement. That was a good call.
  9. countable, uncountable The right to speak at a given time during a debate or other public event; the floor. The Prime Minister has the call.
  10. abbreviation, countable, ellipsis, uncountable Ellipsis of call option.call option
  11. countable, uncountable The act of calling to the other batsman.
  12. countable, uncountable The state of being the batsman whose role it is to call (depends on where the ball goes.)
  13. uncountable A work shift which requires one to be available when requested, i.e. on call. 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.”
  14. countable, uncountable The act of jumping to a subprogram, saving the means to return to the original point.
  15. countable, uncountable 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.
  16. countable, uncountable The act of matching a bet made by a player who has previously bet in the same round of betting.
  17. countable, uncountable A note blown on the horn to encourage the dogs in a hunt.
  18. countable, uncountable A whistle or pipe, used by the boatswain and his mate to summon the sailors to duty.
  19. countable, uncountable A pipe or other instrument to call birds or animals by imitating their note or cry. A game call.
  20. countable, uncountable An invitation to take charge of or serve a church as its pastor.
  21. archaic, countable, uncountable Vocation; employment; calling.
  22. US, countable, uncountable 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.
  23. countable, informal, slang, uncountable A meeting with a client for paid sex; hookup; job. "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
  24. countable, uncountable A lawyer who was called to the bar (became licensed as a lawyer) in a specified year. The work was done by two lawyers, one a 1983 call and the other a 2010 call.
  25. countable, uncountable Need; necessity. There's no call for that kind of bad language!

Call²

Where it comes from

* As an Irish surname, shortened from McCall.

* As an English surname, from the noun caul (“kind of headdress or cap”).

* Also as an English surname, from Middle English calwe (“bald”).

* Also as an English surname, from a Middle English derivative of Latin caulae (“sheepfold”).

* As a Catalan surname, from the noun call (“narrow track”), from Latin callis (“path”). Compare Calle.

* As a German surname, Americanized from Koll, Goll.

proper noun

  1. A surname.

CALL³

noun

  1. abbreviation, initialism, uncountable Initialism of computer-assisted language learning.computer-assisted language learning

Talk about this word