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I'm talking about the name of the popular internet photograph service. I guess the first part of the word (insta) means instant, but I couldn't figure out what it means when it's colligated with gram.

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-gram. – Gnawme Dec 29 '11 at 7:46
I've always known gram as a unit of weight till now... – Mehper C. Palavuzlar Dec 29 '11 at 7:55
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Interesting -- but surely you've encountered words like telegram, sonogram, and the like before? – Gnawme Dec 29 '11 at 7:57
As Turkish is my native language, I've encountered the Turkish of telegram which is telgraf. Turkish has a lot of borrowed words but I have never encountered any one ending with gram. I guess my confusion comes for this reason. – Mehper C. Palavuzlar Dec 29 '11 at 8:04
I assumed that you were not a native English speaker; but I suppose that it wouldn't be common to encounter telegram in English texts in this day and age. – Gnawme Dec 29 '11 at 18:02

1 Answer

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Comes from "Telegram". The answer is on their About page:

When we were kids we loved playing around with cameras -- we loved how all the old Polaroid cameras marketed themselves as “instant” (something we take for granted today). We also felt that the snapshots people were taking were kind of like telegrams in that they got sent over the wire to others -- so we figured why not combine the two?

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protected by RegDwighт♦ Apr 12 '12 at 23:39

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