answering machine
noun
an electronic device that is attached to a telephone and that automatically answers callers with a prerecorded message and records their messages for later playback.
answering machines
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pluralof answering machine.plural
The grammatical form denoting more than one person, place, thing, or idea.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The VCR was also the leading edge of a cluster of inexpensive consumer electronics in the 1980s that transformed domestic life: the Walkman, answering machines, videogames, video cameras and PCs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 14, 2026
I don’t even think we had answering machines at that point.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 23, 2022
Then I left messages on the answering machines of close friends, asking them to come over as soon as they could.
From Salon ● Sep. 28, 2019
Along with the movie’s Checker cabs, rotary phones, outsized answering machines and clunky desktop computers, these mean streets have a Pompeian quality, relics of the past.
From New York Times ● May 9, 2018
"Dial-Tone" out in Alabama has been known to spend half-an-hour simply reading stolen phone-codes aloud into voice-mail answering machines.
From The Hacker Crackdown, law and disorder on the electronic frontier by Bruce Sterling
