telegram
Americannoun
verb (used with or without object)
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of telegram
Explanation
A telegram is a message sent by a telegraph, which is also called a wire. Over time, there have been many means of communicating, such as messenger pigeon, telephone, text message, letter, and email. Another is the telegram, which is a message sent by a telegraph. People often said a telegram was sent "by wire" because the sender and receiver of telegrams were connected by a wire. The electric telegraph has been around since the late 1800's. In the Civil War, important information was sent by telegram, which was the speediest means of communication.
Vocabulary lists containing telegram
Write On!: Graph and Gram
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Far and Away: Tele
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The Red Umbrella
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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.
See Examples For:
At the time, the Tana family was vacationing on a remote Yugoslav island when a telegram arrived: “The restaurant burned down. Call me, Pearl,” recalls Katerina Tana, one of Dan Tana’s daughters.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026
Within hours of carrying the first telegram across the English Channel in 1850, the earliest “submarine telegraph”—27 miles of copper wire wrapped in a rubbery substance called gutta percha—was broken by a fishing trawler.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 4, 2026
The papers also reveal Downing Street was forced to apologise after then-Prime Minister John Major's birthday telegram to the Queen Mother in 1994 was addressed in an "improper manner".
From BBC ● Dec. 29, 2025
A telegram in the same files shows a doctor from Cornwall, who was treating a 10-year-old child in 1944, pleading with the authorities for the medicine: "No hope without penicillin".
From BBC ● Jun. 5, 2025
Businesses used telegrams to buy and sell, but an individual got a telegram only for a death in the family.
From "The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate" by Jacqueline Kelly
Stefansson’s telegrams to the dead men’s families are perfunctory.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2025
ProjectXplore began investigating in September 2024, researching records such as ships' logs, telegrams and charts.
From BBC ● Jul. 21, 2025
The White House was flooded with more than 300,000 letters and telegrams denouncing his life sentence.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2024
At its center, a young, unnamed telegraph operator watches as the beautiful, married Lady Bradeen sends flurries of telegrams, hoping that no one will notice the messages to the dashing Captain Everard.
From Slate ● May 27, 2024
The telegrams also said that William was still on Riverbank’s salary roll, implying that he was not a free agent.
From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield
Toward the end of 1926, Herman Mankiewicz, the screenwriter who would co-father “Citizen Kane,” telegrammed his friend Ben Hecht, the newspaperman who was finding himself between gigs and behind on his rent.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 2023
“I didn’t know what to do with myself. I telegrammed back saying there was no way I wanted to be connected to that show.”
From New York Times ● Mar. 9, 2023
Nesbit had a serious relationship with the author Donald Barthelme before she married Gilman, and one day, Barthelme telegrammed her from Europe.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 14, 2023
At one point, after the mega-success of the "Ringo" LP, no less than John Lennon famously telegrammed Starr, saying “Congratulations. How dare you? And please write me a hit song.”
From Salon ● Oct. 25, 2019
The day before, he had telegrammed President Kennedy and listed twenty different, racially motivated, unpunished actions taken by white men against black people in Birmingham.
From "While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement" by Carolyn Maull McKinstry
In 1916, Charles Evans Hughes waited two weeks before telegramming his concession to Woodrow Wilson, who noted that the message was “a little moth-eaten when it got here but quite legible.”
From Slate ● Nov. 7, 2012
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
