echo

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word echo. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word echo, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say echo in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word echo you have here. The definition of the word echo will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofecho, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
See also: Echo, écho, echó, ekhó, and echö

Translingual

Noun

echo

  1. alternative letter-case form of Echo of the ICAO/NATO radiotelephony alphabet.

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English eccho, ecco, ekko, from Medieval Latin ecco, from Latin echo, from Ancient Greek ἠχώ (ēkhṓ), from ἠχή (ēkhḗ, “sound”). Possibly from the same Proto-Indo-European root as sough.

Pronunciation

Noun

echo (countable and uncountable, plural echoes or echos)

  1. A reflected sound that is heard again by its initial observer.
    Hypernym: reverberation
    • c. 1588–1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :
      The babbling echo mocks the hounds.
    • 1709 May, Alexander Pope, “Pastorals. Summer. The Second Pastoral, or Alexis.”, in Poetical Miscellanies: The Sixth Part. , London: Jacob Tonson,  Where you may have the five former parts.">…], →OCLC, page 732:
      To you I mourn; nor to the Deaf I ſing, / The Woods ſhall anſwer, and their Echo ring.
    • 1960, P G Wodehouse, chapter X, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
      “Then what is your little trouble?” “My little trouble!” I felt that this sort of thing must be stopped at its source. It was only ten minutes to dressing-for-dinner time, and we could go on along these lines for hours. “Listen, old crumpet,” I said patiently. “Make up your mind whether you are my old friend Reginald Herring or an echo in the Swiss mountains. If you're simply going to repeat every word I say –”
    • 2013 May-June, William E. Conner, “An Acoustic Arms Race”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, pages 206–7:
      Earless ghost swift moths become “invisible” to echolocating bats by forming mating clusters close (less than half a meter) above vegetation and effectively blending into the clutter of echoes that the bat receives from the leaves and stems around them.
  2. An utterance repeating what has just been said.
  3. (poetry) A device in verse in which a line ends with a word which recalls the sound of the last word of the preceding line.
  4. (figurative) Sympathetic recognition; response; answer.
  5. (figurative) Something that reflects or hearkens back to an earlier thing.
    • 1991 February 4, Owen Shows, “Start Making Sense”, in Gay Community News, volume 18, number 28, page 11:
      The frustration with the political process that in the '60s led to the formation of resistance groups finds an echo in today's increasingly confrontational tactics.
  6. (figurative) An insignificant indirect result; a ripple.
  7. (computing) The displaying on the command line of the command that has just been executed.
  8. (computing) An individual discussion forum using the echomail system.
    • 1992, Dial in, page 9:
      When someone asks an off-topic question they are usually quickly told to knock it off. You can't ask a question about modems in an echo devoted to local-area networks.
  9. (international standards) alternative letter-case form of Echo from the NATO/ICAO Phonetic Alphabet.
  10. (whist, bridge) A signal, played in the same manner as a trump signal, made by a player who holds four or more trumps (or, as played by some, exactly three trumps) and whose partner has led trumps or signalled for trumps.
  11. (whist, bridge) A signal showing the number held of a plain suit when a high card in that suit is led by one's partner.
  12. An antisemitic punctuation symbol or marking, ((( ))), placed around a name or phrase to indicate the person is Jewish or the entity is controlled by Jewish people.
  13. (medicine, colloquial, uncountable) Clipping of echocardiography.
  14. (medicine, colloquial, countable) Clipping of echocardiogram.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

echo (third-person singular simple present echoes, present participle echoing, simple past and past participle echoed)

  1. (intransitive) Of a sound or sound waves: to reflect off a surface and return; to reverberate or resound.
    • 1953 July, Allen Rowley, “First Impressions of American Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 493:
      With each clap of thunder echoing from one high building to another the noise was terrific.
  2. (intransitive, figuratively) Of a rumour, opinion, etc.: to spread or reverberate.
    • 2004 October 29, Marco R. Della Cava, “Vaccine shortage pricks tempers”, in Statesman Journal, volume 152, number 214, Salem, OR, page 2A:
      The sense that it takes outrageous fortune to get inoculated echoes here in the Bay Area, where pharmacies have canceled flu-shot clinics, doctors turn away pleading patients and health officials are reduced to telling panicked callers that they should practice good personal hygiene.
  3. (transitive) To reflect back (a sound).
    • 1697, Virgil, “(please specify the book number)”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. , London: Jacob Tonson, , →OCLC:
      Those peals are echoed by the Trojan throng.
    • 1827, John Keble, The Christian Year: Christmas Day:
      The wondrous sound / Is echoed on forever.
  4. (transitive, figuratively) To repeat (another’s speech, opinion, etc.).
    Sid echoed his father’s point of view.
    • 1897, Richard Marsh, The Beetle:
      ‘I want nothing.’
      ‘Nor I,’ echoed Sydney.
    • 2013 July-August, Sarah Glaz, “Ode to Prime Numbers”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 4:
      Some poems, echoing the purpose of early poetic treatises on scientific principles, attempt to elucidate the mathematical concepts that underlie prime numbers. Others play with primes’ cultural associations. Still others derive their structure from mathematical patterns involving primes.
    • 2023 March 8, David Clough, “The long road that led to Beeching”, in RAIL, number 978, page 43:
      His views were echoed by The Economist, which feared that the effects of modernisation would be no more than “chromium-plated” inefficiency caused by unimaginative railway management and adverse union reaction.
  5. (computing, transitive) To repeat its input as input to some other device or system.
    • 1991, Martin D. Seyer, RS-232 made easy:
      The device that is to echo the characters should be optioned for echoplexing.
  6. (intransitive, whist, bridge) To give the echo signal, informing one's partner about cards one holds.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Translations

Anagrams

Asturian

Verb

echo

  1. first-person singular present indicative of echar

Czech

Pronunciation

Noun

echo n

  1. echo (reflected sound)
    Synonym: ozvěna

Declension

Declension of echo (velar neuter)
singular plural
nominative echo echa
genitive echa ech
dative echu echům
accusative echo echa
vocative echo echa
locative echu echách
instrumental echem echy

Further reading

Dutch

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈɛ.xoː/
  • Audio:(file)
  • Hyphenation: echo

Etymology 1

From Middle Dutch echo, from Latin ēchō, from Ancient Greek ἠχώ (ēkhṓ), from ἠχή (ēkhḗ, “sound”).

Noun

echo f (plural echo's, diminutive echootje n)

  1. echo
    Synonym: weergalm
Derived terms
Descendants
  • → Papiamentu: èko, echo

Etymology 2

Clipping of echografie and echoscopie.

Noun

echo f (plural echo's, diminutive echootje n)

  1. ultrasound scan
    Synonyms: echografie, echoscopie
Derived terms

Etymology 3

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Verb

echo

  1. inflection of echoën:
    1. first-person singular present indicative
    2. (in case of inversion) second-person singular present indicative
    3. imperative

Ladino

Noun

echo m (Hebrew spelling איג׳ו)

  1. work

Latin

A user has added this entry to requests for verification(+) with the reason: “For plural nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, vocative. Let's cite whatever plural forms can actually be attested, since they are highly irregular.”
If it cannot be verified that this term meets our attestation criteria, it will be deleted. Feel free to edit this entry as normal, but do not remove {{rfv}} until the request has been resolved.

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ἠχώ (ēkhṓ).

Pronunciation

Noun

ēchō f (genitive ēchūs); fourth declension

  1. repercussion of sound, echo
    Synonym: imāgō

Declension

Fourth-declension noun (all cases except the genitive and accusative singular in -ō).

singular plural
nominative ēchō ēchō
genitive ēchūs
ēchō 		ēchō
dative ēchō ēchō
accusative ēchō
ēchōn 		ēchō
ablative ēchō ēchō
vocative ēchō ēchō
  • Only the nominative singular and the accusative singular ēchō and ēchōn are attested in ancient Latin.

References

  1. ^ Sjökvist, Peter (2012) The Music Theory of Harald Vallerius - Three Dissertations from 17th-century Sweden‎, page 221:
    The Greek feminines ending in ώ, like ἠχώ, have no plural forms (Jannaris 1987, §410–411). The Latin genitive echus (ἠχοῦς) and the accusative echo (ἠχώ), are thus in accordance with the form in Classical ancient Greek. In neo-Latin echo was treated in various more- or less-fanciful ways, while in ancient Latin the word is only attested in the singular nominative echo and the singular accusatives echo and echon (TLL).
    As can be seen, Vallerius here uses the form echo as a plural nominative, but such a form cannot be attested, neither in handbooks of the period, nor in modern lexica. For instance, Noltenius (col. 54) writes: ECHO, -us, per unum C, thus only stressing that the word should be spelled with one c. The same genitive form echus is given in L&S, Krebs & Schmalz, JPG, BFS, Matthiae, while OLD and TLL only account for the nominative and accusative singular (echo and echo or echon). In Kircher (1650, vol. II, p. 246) we find on the same page both the singular genitive form echus, the dative echoni and the accusative echum, as well as the plural nominative echo (sunt Echo debiles et languidae). Later on, however, we also meet the plural nominative echi in Echi sursum et deorsum reverberantes (Kircher 1650, vol. II, p. 250), as well als the genitive Echonis and the ablative Echone (p. 264). Vallerius himself, however, has the ablative Echo in thesis 67, and a genitive Echo in thesis 82 below.

Further reading

Polish

Polish Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia pl

Etymology

Inherited from Old Polish echo.

Pronunciation

Noun

echo n (related adjective echowy)

  1. echo (reflected sound that is heard again by its initial observer)
  2. (figurative) echo (reactions to phenomena and events that occurred earlier)
  3. (figurative) echo (news that spreads fast)

Declension

Declension of echo
singular plural
nominative echo echa
genitive echa ech
dative echu echom
accusative echo echa
instrumental echem echami
locative echu echach
vocative echo echa

Derived terms

verbs
adverbs

Further reading

  • echo in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
  • echo in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Portuguese

Noun

echo m (plural echos)

  1. Pre-reform spelling (used until 1943 in Brazil and 1911 in Portugal) of eco.

Spanish

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

Inherited from Vulgar Latin *iectus, from Latin iactus.

Noun

echo m (plural echos)

  1. (obsolete) throw
    Synonyms: tiro, lanzamiento

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Verb

echo

  1. first-person singular present indicative of echar

Further reading

Wikious
Boobota
Sagapedia