vocabulary - Cell phone? Cell? Mobile phone? What's the "correct" term?


What's that type of phone called that you don't need a cable for and you can use everywhere in the world (provided there's coverage ;-))?


And what differences are there between the regions? USA/UK/AUS etc... and even within, say, the US (or even UK). I've even read rumors that in parts of the east of the US, people use the term "handy" (which is a really crazy German "Americanism").


EDIT: Clarification: The colloquial usage is more interesting (to me) than the "correct" official terminology (though that's of interest, too).



Answer



In the UK, we use mobile and/or phone, and perhaps even mobi/moby (though I've never seen it written that way outside text messages.


In the US, I've heard of cellular phone/cell phone/cell, and in Germany they call them handies (which still makes me chuckle for no good reason).


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

single word requests - What do you call hypothetical inhabitants living on the Moon?