intonation
noun
Simple meaning
The rise and fall of the voice in speaking.
Pronunciation
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɪntɵˈneɪʃən
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
linguistics
The rise and fall of the voice in speaking.
Reciting in a musical prolonged tone; intonating or singing of the opening phrase of a plain-chant, psalm, or canticle by a single voice, as of a priest.
Singing or playing in good tune or otherwise.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Uncommon
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The rise and fall of the voice in speaking.
Used this way, intonation is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a grammar or language-study use: it describes how language works, so it appears in teaching and reference writing.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Academic writing
- Education/classroom
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use intonation
- “Her intonation was false.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Intonations characteristic of questions and requests and statements.
The intonation of keyboard instruments where the pitch of each note is fixed and cannot be varied by the performer.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: rise and fall of the voice in speaking
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API (CC BY-SA 3.0). Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.