telegraph

plural telegraphs

1. uncommonSynonym of telegraphy, any process for transmitting arbitrarily long messages over a long distance using a symbolic code.

   This strict sense of telegraph developed from French usage for Napoleon's overland semaphore network but rather arbitrarily excludes similar Chinese and other signalling networks.

   Synonyms: telegraphy, any process for transmitting arbitrarily long messages over a long distance using a symbolic code

2. historicalThe electrical device gradually developed in the early 19th century to transmit messages (telegrams) using Morse code; the entire system used to transmit its messages including overhead lines and transoceanic cables.

   The first message transmitted by telegraph in the United States was WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT.

   4 more examples

   The Bat—they called him the Bat.[…]. He[…]played a lone hand,[…]. Most lone wolves had a moll at any rate—women were their ruin—but if the Bat had a moll, not even the grapevine telegraph could locate her.

   1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Avery Hopwood, chapter I, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 01

   The middle-class families celebrated by Kipling, the prolific lowbrow families whose sons officered the army and navy and swarmed over all the waste places of the earth from the Yukon to the Irrawaddy, were dwindling before 1914. The thing that had killed them was the telegraph. In a narrowing world, more and more governed from Whitehall, there was every year less room for individual initiative... By 1920 nearly every inch of the colonial empire was in the grip of Whitehall. Well-meaning, over-civilized men, in dark suits and black felt hats, with neatly rolled umbrellas crooked over the left forearm, were imposing their constipated view of life on Malaya and Nigeria, Mombasa and Mandalay.

   1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius/Part I

   When a train has to ascend the incline, it first runs down, engine first, from the station about 60 or 70 yards. Then comes behind it the aforesaid truck, or one similar, which, being attached to an endless wire rope, a communication is made by means of the electric telegraph to the engineman at the top of the incline, when the fixed engine begins to work, and the train, partly pulled by the locomotive before, and partly pushed by the truck behind, rapidly ascends, taking somewhere about three minutes to get up.

   1957 September 28, M. D. Greville and G. O. Holt, “Railway Development in Manchester—1”, in Railway Magazine, page 620, from Herapath's Journal

   “Despite the current furore over hacking, which is only a modern term for bugging, eavesdropping, signals intercept, listening-in, tapping, monitoring, there has never been guaranteed privacy since the earliest optical telegraphs to today’s internet,” Packer says. “There never was and never will be privacy.”

   2015 July 15, Thomas McMullan, “The world's first hack: the telegraph and the invention of privacy”, in The Guardian

3. video gamesA visible or audible cue that indicates to an opponent the action that a character is about to take.

present singular third person telegraphs · participle present telegraphing · participle past telegraphed · past telegraphed

1. To use a telegraph; to send a message by telegraph.

   Whenever this portent occurs, my steward telegraphs to me, that I, as head of the family, be not unsteeled against the shock of a bereavement […]

   1911, Max Beerbohm, chapter 5, in Zuleika Dobson, London: Heinemann, published 1922, page 60

   1 more example

   In "The Boscombe Valley Mystery," Sherlock Holmes telegraphs Watson: "Have you a couple of days to spare? Have just been wired for from the West of England in connection with Boscombe Valley tragedy. […]."

   1957 May 28, Neil Caplan, “Railways in English Fiction”, in Railway Magazine, page 349

2. figurativelyTo clearly communicate to another nonverbally (whether by gesture, a change in attitude, or any other sign), and especially unintentionally.

   Her frown telegraphed her displeasure.

   4 more examples

   He took a jab and telegraphed his punch so loudly that I was able to land a solid right hand to his stomach.

   2007, James A. Rozhon, The Man in the Maze

   The trip was the latest step in a broader transformation of Mr. Putin that has become apparent in recent weeks. He is telegraphing a shift away from wartime crisis mode back toward the aura of a calm, paternalistic leader shielding Russians from the dangers of the world.

   2022 June 30, Anton Troianovski, “Patient and Confident, Putin Shifts Out of Wartime Crisis Mode”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   For weeks, Ukrainian officials had telegraphed plans for a planned counterattack in the southern Kherson region, but instead the main focus of this week’s counterattack has been Kharkiv in the north-east, taking everyone, including apparently the Russians, by surprise.

   2022 September 9, Isobel Koshiw, Shaun Walker, “Russia sends reinforcements to Kharkiv to repel Ukraine counterattack”, in The Guardian

   Sergey Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, said China appeared to telegraph “a reproach to the Russians, that they’re not acting like a great power, that they are creating instability.”

   2022 September 15, Anton Troianovski, Keith Bradsher, Austin Ramzy, “Chinese Support for Putin’s War Looks More Shaky After Summit”, in The New York Times, →ISSN