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telegram

[tel-i-gram] / ˈtɛl ɪˌgræm /


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.

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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

However, his name was not removed from the overboard list and his family received a telegram that said Raymond was missing in action.

From BBC May 29, 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

The telegram said that if the United States declared war, Germany wanted Mexico on its side.

From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield

Officials said the message had left Downing Street correctly but blamed an error in transmission and suggested telegrams should be abandoned altogether.

From BBC Dec. 29, 2025

There, Susan met Giorgos Xenarios, a goldsmith and jewelry maker 27 years her senior who, after many love letters, telegrams, intercontinental trips and one very firm ultimatum, migrated to the U.S. in 1974.

From The Wall Street Journal Oct. 10, 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

Beth, who was ready first, kept reporting what went on next door, and enlivened her sisters’ toilets by frequent telegrams from the window.

From "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott

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

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

Hecht hailed from the quick-witted New York circles once frequented by Mankiewicz, who telegrammed his friend an oft-quoted invitation to Hollywood: “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots.”

From New York Times Dec. 4, 2020

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




Vocabulary lists containing telegram


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