wireline
adj.— «These latter licenses, which are being snapped up by entrepreneurs, by cellular telephone franchisees, by cable television companies, and by the Bells themselves, will allow low-cost entry into the local telephone market. They are being treated by the FCC and regulators as a field-leveling, pro-competitive tool but are viewed by the Bell companies as one more dispiriting milestone on the migration away from wireline networks, on which the Bell companies currently rely for nearly all of their revenue.» —“Small Access Carriers Challenging Local Bell Monopolies A 2d Divestiture Looms in U.S.” by Sanford Bingham in New York international Herald Tribune (Paris, France) Oct. 7, 1991. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
In the 15th century, the word respair meant “to have hope again.” Although this word fell out of use, it’s among dozens collected in a new book of soothing vocabulary for troubled times. Plus, baseball slang: If a batter...
One of the most powerful words you’ll ever hear — and one of the most poignant — isn’t in dictionaries yet. But it probably will be one day. The word is endling, and it means “the last surviving member of a species.” The...