Tone Definition | What is Tone? - PoetrySoup

[n] a quality of a given color that differs slightly from a primary color; "after several trials he mixed the shade of pink that she wanted"
[n] (linguistics) a pitch or change in pitch of the voice that serves to distinguish words in tonal languages; "the Beijing dialect uses four tones"
[n] the distinctive property of a complex sound (a voice or noise or musical sound); "the timbre of her soprano was rich and lovely"; "the muffled tones of the broken bell summoned them to meet"
[n] the quality of something (an act or a piece of writing) that reveals the attitudes and presuppositions of the author; "the general tone of articles appearing in the newspapers is that the government should withdraw"; "from the tone of her behavior I gathered that I had outstayed my welcome"
[n] a steady sound without overtones; "they tested his hearing with pure tones of different frequencies"
[n] a musical interval of two semitones
[n] a notation representing the pitch and duration of a musical sound; "the singer held the note too long"
[n] the quality of a person's voice; "he began in a conversational tone"; "he spoke in a nervous tone of voice"
[n] the general atmosphere of a place or situation and the effect that it has on people; "the feel of the city excited him"; "a clergyman improved the tone of the meeting"; "it had the smell of treason"
[n] the elastic tension of living muscles, arteries, etc. that facilitate response to stimuli; "the doctor tested my tonicity"
[v] give a healthy elasticity to; "Let's tone our muscles"
[v] change to a color image; of photography
[v] change the color or tone of

The author's attitude to the subject as revealed in the style and the manner of the writing. This might be for instance serious, comic, or ironic.

Example

N/A

Synonyms

feel, feeling, flavor, flavour, look, musical note, note, pure tone, quality, shade, smell, spirit, step, strengthen, timber, timbre, tincture, tint, tone of voice, tone up, tonicity, tonus, whole step, whole tone

Antonyms

amyotonia, atonia, atonicity, atony

See Also...

acciaccatura, ambiance, ambience, appoggiatura, atmosphere, auditory sensation, blue note, catatonia, chord, color, color, color in, coloration, coloring, colorise, colorize, colour, colour, colour in, colouration, colouring, colourise, colourize, crotchet, delivery, demisemiquaver, discolor, discolour, dominant, eighth note, exercise, fullness, grace note, half note, harmonic, harshness, hemidemisemiquaver, interval, keynote, leading tone, manner of speaking, mediant, mellowness, middle C, minim, muscle tone, muscular tonus, musical interval, musical notation, musical scale, myotonia, nasality, passing note, passing tone, pedal, pedal point, pitch, plangency, quarter note, quaver, register, resonance, reverberance, richness, ringing, roughness, scale, semibreve, semiquaver, shake, shrillness, sixteenth note, sixty-fourth note, sonority, sonorousness, sound, sound property, speech, stridence, stridency, subdominant, submediant, subtonic, supertonic, tautness, tenseness, tension, tensity, thirty-second note, tinge, tonic, trill, undertone, undertone, vibrancy, whole note, work out, Zeitgeist