Other forms: telegrams
A telegram is a short message once sent by wire and delivered on paper. Send a telegram, a telegram arrived, a congratulatory telegram.
Charged by the word, which is why the style dropped every article and ended each sentence with STOP. A telegram at the door meant bad news for a whole generation, since that is how wartime deaths were announced.
1nountelegramA short message once sent by wire and delivered on paper.
“Grandpa sent a telegram from Paris that simply said, 'Arrived safely, letter follows.'”
telegram is a message.
Tele-, far, plus -gram, something written, coined in 1852.
Ancient Greek
γράμμα — a small weight, a scruple
French
gramme
English
gram
English, today
telegram
From tele- + -gram. From tele- + -gram. gram comes from French gramme, from Ancient Greek γράμμα (“a small weight, a scruple”). a doublet of gramma.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA