cassette

/kəˈsɛt/

/kəˈsɛt/

Other forms: cassettes

A cassette is an audiotape, for recording or listening to sound. Before CDs were invented in the 1980s, many people bought their favorite music albums on cassettes.

You can use the word cassette to mean an audio or a videotape, though it's more commonly used for something you listen to. To use a cassette, you need a tape player or recorder. Cassette means "little box" in French, and this describes the way it looks, like a small plastic box. The modern meaning came about in 1960.

Definitions of cassette

1. noun

   a container that holds a magnetic tape used for recording or playing sound or video
   types:

   audiocassette

   a cassette for audiotape

   videocassette

   a cassette for videotape

   type of:

   container

   any object that can be used to hold things (especially a large metal boxlike object of standardized dimensions that can be loaded from one form of transport to another)