clock-radio (n.)

"machine to measure and indicate time mechanically" (since late 1940s also electronically), late 14c., clokke, originally "clock with bells," probably from Middle Dutch clocke (Dutch klok) "a clock," from Old North French cloque (Old French cloke, Modern French cloche "a bell"), from Medieval Latin clocca "bell," which probably is from Celtic (compare Old Irish clocc, Welsh cloch, Manx clagg "a bell") and spread by Irish missionaries (unless the Celtic words are from Latin). Ultimately of imitative origin.

Wherever it actually arose, it was prob. echoic, imitating the rattling made by the early handbells of sheet-iron and quadrilateral shape, rather than the ringing of the cast circular bells of later date. [OED]

Replaced Old English dægmæl, from dæg "day" + mæl "measure, mark" (see meal (n.1)). The Latin word was horologium (source of French horologe, Spanish reloj, Italian oriolo, orologio); the Greeks used a water-clock (klepsydra, literally "water thief;" see clepsydra).

The image of put (or set) the clock back "return to an earlier state or system" is from 1862. Round-the-clock (adj.) is from 1943, originally in reference to air raids. To have a face that would stop a clock "be very ugly" is from 1886. (Variations from c. 1890 include break a mirror, kill chickens.)

I remember I remember

That boarding house forlorn,

The little window where the smell

Of hash came in the morn.

I mind the broken looking-glass,

The mattress like a rock,

The servant-girl from County Clare,

Whose face would stop a clock.

[... etc.; The Insurance Journal, January 1886]

"wireless transmission of voice signals with radio waves," 1907, abstracted or shortened from earlier combinations such as radio-receiver (1903), radiophone "instrument for the production of sound by radiant energy" (1881), radio-telegraphy "means of sending telegraph messages by radio rather than by wire" (1898), from radio- as a combining form of Latin radius "beam" (see radius). Use for "radio receiver" is attested by 1913; sense of "sound broadcasting as a medium" also is from 1913.

That winter, however—the winter of 1921-22—[radio] came with a rush. Soon everybody was talking, not about wireless telephony, but about radio. A San Francisco paper described the discovery that millions were making: "There is radio music in the air, every night, everywhere. Anybody can hear it at home on a receiving set, which any boy can put up in an hour." In February President Harding had an outfit installed in his study, and the Dixmoor Golf Club announced that it would install a "telephone" to enable golfers to hear church services. [Frederick Lewis Allen, "Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's," 1931]

It is not a dream, but a probability that the radio will demolish blocs, cut the strings of red tape, actuate the voice "back home," dismantle politics and entrench the nation's executive in a position of power unlike that within the grasp of any executive in the world's history. [The Reading Eagle, Reading, Pa., U.S.A., March 16, 1924]

As late as July 1921 the New York Times was calling it wireless telephony, and wireless remained widespread until World War II, when military preference for radio established it as the word. As an adjective by 1912, "by radio transmission;" meaning "controlled by radio" is from 1974. Radio _______ as the proper name of a particular radio station or service, "radio station or service from _______" is by 1920. A radio shack (1946) was a small outbuilding housing radio equipment.