From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishphone in phrasal verb1 TELEPHONEto telephone the place where you work, especially in order to report something I’ll phone in and let them know.phone something ↔ in I’ll phone the report in tomorrow morning. She phoned in sick (=telephoned to say that she was ill and could not come to work).2 TELEPHONEto telephone a radio or television show to give your opinion or ask a question There’s still time to phone in before the end of the programme. → phone-in → phone→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
phoned in sick• Thursday morning, Stafford, who had not missed a day because of illness in six years, phoned in sick.phone-inˈphone-in noun [countable] AMTa radio or television programme in which you hear ordinary people expressing opinions or asking questions over the telephoneExamples from the Corpus
phone-in• Where the tip-off really came from could never be later established, except that it was a phone-in and anonymous.• They are planning a blitz of television commercials, town-hall meetings and phone-ins.• Call the separate live phone-in programme on 0224-625900.• As a regular broadcaster on local radio I went along to Radio Nottingham for one of my phone-ins on slimming.• Midland finally gave in when her case was featured on a radio phone-in about bad treatment by banks.• A radio phone-in was swamped with complaints yesterday about Sure Style Windows salesmen working in Cleveland.• Something very similar happens on the meet-the-people programmes, the phone-ins and studio debates.• The phone-in revealed two more people who had called the police to remove Sure Style salesmen. 