television

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   An electronic communication medium that allows the transmission of real-time visual images, and often sound.

   She watched television for over five hours last night.

2. 2
   noun

   An electronic home entertainment device equipped with a screen and a speaker for receiving television signals and displaying them in audio-visual form.

   I have an old television in the study.

3. 3
   noun

   Collectively, the programs broadcast via the medium of television.

   fifty-seven channels and nothing on television

4. 4
   noun

   Vision at a distance.

   Half an hour with the manager of Faith Brothers had had the effect of studding the sergeant's habitual simplicity of words and phrases with amazing jewels of technicality. He talked gladly of "lines" and "repeats" and similar profundities, so that Grant had, through his bulk, in a queer television a vivid picture of the manager himself.

5. 5
   noun

   a telecommunication system that transmits images of objects (stationary or moving) between distant points

6. 6
   noun

   an electronic device that receives television signals and displays them on a screen

7. 7
   noun

   broadcasting visual images of stationary or moving objects

8. 8
   verb

   To watch television.

Etymology

From tele- + vision; first attested in 1900, probably influenced by French télévision from Constantin Perskyi's 1900 paper that was unpublished but presented at a Paris conference.