Past tense of dial: to call someone on a telephone by entering numbers, or to tune a radio to a specific station.
From dial (the numbered wheel on old phones), from Latin 'dialis' meaning daily, from 'dies' (day). The dial originally marked hours on a clock face.
The word 'dial' is becoming obsolete—younger people don't 'dial' phones anymore, yet the word persists in 'speed dial' and remains in dictionaries as digital ghosts of old technology!
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