telephony
/təˈlɛf.ə.ni/noun
telephony is spelled T-E-L-E-P-H-O-N-Y. The wrong spelling people search most is telphony: about 10 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 79 of all searches for the word. Telephony is a noun meaning “The act of sound transmission via the electromagnetic spectrum”. The plural of telephony is telephonies.
How many letters and syllables are in telephony?
| Letters | 9: T-E-L-E-P-H-O-N-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 1 million words; the 33,236th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, telphony, about 10 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell telephony?
Telephony is spelled T-E-L-E-P-H-O-N-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 79 of the searches for telephony in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is telephony?
Telephony appears about once in every 1 million words in written English, the 33,236th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce telephony?
- UK /təˈlɛf.ə.ni/
Telephony has 4 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-telephony.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with telephony?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as telephony (/ɛfəni/).
Spelled with the same letters in another order: polythene.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of telephony
- telephonies plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does telephony mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The act of sound transmission via the electromagnetic spectrum.
- 2
The study and application of telephone technology.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Telephony in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense act of sound transmission via the electromagnetic spectrum:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does telephony come from?
From telephone + -y.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).