• 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"
• (linguistics) a pitch or change in pitch of the voice that serves to distinguish words in tonal languages; "the Beijing dialect uses four Tones"
• (music) 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"
• 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 gathe
• a steady sound without overTones; "they tested his hearing with pure Tones of different frequencies"
• a musical interval of two semiTones
• a notation representing the pitch and duration of a musical sound; "the singer held the note too long"
• the quality of a person''s voice; "he began in a conversational Tone"; "he spoke in a nervous Tone of voice"
• 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"
• the elastic tension of living muscles, arteries, etc. that facilitate response to stimuli; "the doctor tested my tonicity"
• give a healthy elasticity to; "Let''s Tone our muscles"
• change to a color image; "Tone a photographic image"
• change the color or Tone of; "Tone a negative"
• of one''s speech, varying the pitch
• utter monotonously and repetitively and rhythmically; "The students chanted the same slogan over and over again"

'Tone' in other languages