Noun

1. A device (transducer) used to convert sound waves into a varying electric current; normally fed into an amplifier and either recorded or broadcast.

Usage notes

• The collective noun for several microphones (such as can be observed at a press conference) is .

Quotations

• 1965: Charles McDowell, Campaign Fever: The National Folk Festival, from New Hampshire to November, 1964, page 11 (Morrow)

  Behind the tangled garden of microphones that had sprouted on the lectern, Goldwater spoke softly and casually about his family.

• 1967: Roderick MacLeish, The Sun Stood Still, page 41 (Atheneum)

  Above them, speaking over a steel garden of microphones, the agitator sweated and scowled out into the darkening street.

• 2002: Laura Lippman, In a Strange City, page 71 (HarperCollins; ISBN 0380810239, 9780380810239)

  […] between the huge Depression-era horses on the plaza opposite City Hall — and Rainer was completely focused on them as they moved toward the podium and the little garden of microphones that had sprouted there. The Hilliards walked stiffly, as if they had been in a car accident.

• 2005: Tom Stanton, Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America, page 177 (HarperCollins; ISBN 0060722908, 9780060722906)

  Aaron perched himself on a wooden folding chair behind a garden of microphones and beamed as he answered questions. Sure, he was disappointed.

• 2006: Tim Miller and Glen Johnson, 1001 Beds: Performances, Essays, and Travels, page 109 (University of Wisconsin Press; ISBN 9780299216900, 9780299216948)

  Walking back down the marble stairs, which now felt more like I was leaving Principal Lambas’s office than the Forum in Rome, Holly, Karen, and I made our way to a garden of microphones for the press conference. I was dreading having to say something.

• 2009: Caroline B. Cooney, If the Witness Lied, page 53 (Random House Children’s Books; ISBN 0385734484, 9780385734486)

  […] garden of microphones, which stuck up like metal flowers in her face.

Verb

1. To put one or more microphones on or in.