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tone

noun · verb

Simple meaning

A notation representing the pitch and duration of a musical sound.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

tohn
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈtoʊn

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.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. linguistics

    A pitch or change in pitch of the voice that serves to distinguish words in tonal languages

    “The Beijing dialect uses four tones.”

  2. music

    A notation representing the pitch and duration of a musical sound

  3. musicin the diatonic scale

    An interval of a major second.

  4. music

    A specific pitch.

  5. The character of a sound, especially the timbre of an instrument or voice.

  6. The shade or quality of a colour.

verb

  1. Change to a color image

  2. transitive

    To change the colour of

  3. transitive

    To make (something) firmer

  4. transitive

    To give a particular tone to

  5. transitive

    To utter with an affected tone.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A notation representing the pitch and duration of a musical sound

Used this way, tone is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a musical use: it is everyday language among musicians and listeners, and specialised outside that.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Where it naturally appears

  • Music/performance
  • Arts writing

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use tone

  • “They tested his hearing with pure tones of different frequencies.”noun
  • “The general tone of articles appearing in the newspapers is that the government should withdraw.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

General

general tone

Notation

whole tone

Definition

muscle tone

Other combinations

pure tonelow tonemoral tonedifferent tonehigh tone

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • tonernounInflected form

    A solution containing chemicals that can change the color of a photographic print.

  • tonedadjectiveInflected form

    Having or distinguished by a tone.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • tone deafnessnounCompound term

    An inability to distinguish differences in pitch.

  • tone downverbCompound term

    Deaden (a sound or noise), especially by wrapping.

  • tone endingnounCompound term

    The act or manner of terminating a musical phrase or tone.

  • tone languagenounCompound term

    A language in which different tones distinguish different meanings.

  • tone of voicenounCompound term

    The quality of a person's voice.

  • tone poemnounCompound term

    An orchestral composition based on literature or folk tales.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.