Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
n. 1 The sequence of digits used to identify a particular destination telephone in a network. 2 (context in the plural humorous English) A large number.
WordNet
n. the number is used in calling a particular telephone; "he has an unlisted number" [syn: phone number, number]
Wikipedia
A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a fixed-line telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices for data transmission via the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or other private networks. Most telephone numbers are assigned to one telephone line or one mobile telephone, and most lines or mobiles have one number.
A telephone number serves as an address for switching telephone calls using a system of destination routing. Telephone numbers are entered or dialed by a calling party on the originating telephone set, which transmits the sequence of digits in the process of signaling to a telephone exchange. The exchange completes the call either to another locally connected subscriber or via the PSTN to the called party.
The use of telephone numbers instead of subscriber names to indicate to the switchboard operator the call destination was developed and first used in the autumn of 1879 in Lowell, Massachusetts during a measles epidemic. A local physician, Moses Greeley Parker, realized that if all four of the city's operators were incapacitated by the epidemic, their replacements would have great trouble quickly learning the assignment of the 200 jacks on the switchboard to subscribers. He recommended the use of numbers instead. "The local Bell company management at first protested that its customers would consider their designation by numbers to be beneath their dignity; nevertheless, it saw the logic of the suggestion and followed it. The subscribers were not outraged; the epidemic quickly passed, but telephone numbers did not."
In mathematics, the telephone numbers or involution numbers are a sequence of integers that count the number of connection patterns in a telephone system with subscribers, where connections are made between pairs of subscribers. These numbers also describe the number of matchings (the Hosoya index) of a complete graph on vertices, the number of permutations on elements that are involutions, the sum of absolute values of coefficients of the Hermite polynomials, the number of standard Young tableaux with cells, and the sum of the degrees of the irreducible representations of the symmetric group. Involution numbers were first studied in 1800 by Heinrich August Rothe, who gave a recurrence equation by which they may be calculated, giving the values (starting from )
1, 1, 2, 4, 10, 26, 76, 232, 764, 2620, 9496, ... .Usage examples of "telephone number".
She lives at 496 East Pelton Avenue, and the telephone number is Drenton 68942.
She did not have Suzy's real name or her telephone number or her address.
There was no telephone number available, the small stone building had had no name outside, and aside from an unobtrusive video camera above the buzzer, it could have been suspended in time from a hundred years before.
As the long dresses of departing guests trailed over the white lawn, flurrying flakes seemed to blur the great house and a party of whooping young bloods, all no doubt with Taggie's telephone number in their breast pockets, engaged in a snowball fight, Cameron felt she had gone back four hundred years.
Would the thirty be still working or would it run out like a half-rung telephone number?
He pencilled Leslie Slote's name and telephone number on a bit of paper fished from his pocket.
So he waited out his flock of shivers and then he pulled his Rolodex over in front of him and found Thad's telephone number.
I put my name, address and telephone number on the back of that final decree of divorce when I filed it as attorney for Peter Kent.