How common are landline phones with discretion on them?

What does “discretion” mean? Personally, I never heard of such a feature.

I don’t know. I thought maybe the speakers voice would be sucked into the telephone? Sounds like a joke, but…

I’ve never heard that term regarding a phone, but maybe it means call screening.

I haven’t heard of that as any phone feature.

You mean called ID?

Source?

@flo please clarify.

I’d guess it means mute. Switches the mic off instead of the old hand over the receiver.

Pretty common in offices. Probably not so in homes.

I’d make a wild guess it could be encryption between the handset and the base station on cordless home phones for landlines?
But, seriously, @flo, where did you see this term ?

I tried to find the image of a phone with that feature on Google image. I heard about it in passing. Someone was asking about it. The phone is on a wall, in a public building, as an alternative to a payphone.

It’s in a French part of the world or something. Does the word discretion means something else in French?

@Lightlyseared I guess your answer is most likely it. But if anyone fids an image of it, if you would post it. I’ll try to.

Discretion in the context of a phone call, could mean not letting others around you hear what you are saying into the phone. Or indeed, a mute button so that you can talk about the caller without them hearing you.

Did it have one of those hoods that used to be very common in hotels and other pay phones in buildings?

I don’t know if it has a hood.