Meaning

noun apparatus used to communicate at a distance over a wire (usually in Morse code)

verb send cables, wires, or telegrams

originBorrowed from French télégraphe, equivalent to tele- (“far, distant”) + graph (“writing”), suggested as a new name for Claude Chappe's overland semaphore network by André François Miot de Mélito in place of Chappe's original tachygraphe (“tachygraph, fast writer”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0