videotape

nounB22 meaningsVery rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutraldated · an editor’s judgement

Other forms: videotaped, videotapes, videotaping

A videotape is a plastic cassette that films and television were recorded onto before discs arrived. A chunky black box you pushed into a slot and had to rewind before returning.

For about twenty-five years the videotape was how a household kept a film, and VHS was the format that won. The word works as a verb too: people videotaped weddings, and police videotaped interviews. Both uses now sound dated — you record something, or you film it — which makes videotape a quiet marker of when a story is set. In a novel, a shelf of videotapes gives you the decade without a date being mentioned.

Definitions of videotape

1nounvideotapeA cassette of magnetic tape holding recorded pictures and sound.B2
“He found a box of old videotapes in the loft.”
2verbrecordTo record something onto such a tape.B2
“The ceremony was videotaped by an uncle.”

Where it comes from

From video + tape, a trademark of media company Ampex.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.

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