statuette awarded by the American National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, 1959, from the gram- in gramophone, on the model of Emmy.
Entries linking to grammy
gramophone n.
"machine for recording and reproducing sounds by needle-tracing on some solid material," 1887, trademark by German-born U.S. inventor Emil Berliner (1851-1929), an inversion of phonogram (1884) "the tracing made by a phonograph needle," which was coined from Greek phōnē "voice, sound," from PIE root *bha- (2) "to speak, tell, say" + gramma "something written" (see -gram).
Berliner's machine used a flat disc and succeeded with the public. Edison's phonograph used a cylinder and did not. Despised by linguistic purists (Weekley calls gramophone "An atrocity formed by reversing phonogram") who tried at least to amend it to grammophone, it was replaced by record player after mid-1950s. There also was a graphophone (1886).
Emmy n.
statuette awarded by the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, 1949, said to be an alteration of Immy, from image.