- (n.) The condition of normal balance of a healthy plant in its relations to light, heat, and moisture.
- (n.) Quality, with respect to attendant feeling; the more or less variable complex of emotion accompanying and characterizing a sensation or a conceptual state; as, feeling tone; color tone.
- (n.) Color quality proper; -- called also hue. Also, a gradation of color, either a hue or a tint or shade.
- (n.) A sound considered as to pitch; as, the seven tones of the octave; she has good high tones.
- (n.) The peculiar quality of sound in any voice or instrument; as, a rich tone, a reedy tone.
- (v.t.) To utter with an affected tone.
- (n.) That state of a body or of any of its organs or parts, in which the animal functions are healthy and performed with due vigor.
- (n.) Sound or the character of a sound or a sound considered as of this or that character; as, a low, high, loud, grave, acute, sweet or harsh tone.
- (v.t.) To bring, as a print, to a certain required shade of color, as by chemical treatment.
- (n.) The general effect of a picture produced by the combination of light and shade, together with color in the case of a painting; -- commonly used in a favorable sense; as, this picture has tone.
- (n.) A mode or tune or plain chant; as, the Gregorian tones.
- (v.t.) To give tone or a particular tone, to; to tune. See Tune, v. t.
- (n.) General or prevailing character or style, as of morals, manners or sentiment, in reference to a scale of high and low; as, a low tone of morals; a tone of elevated sentiment; a courtly tone of manners.
- (n.) Tenor; character; spirit; drift; as, the tone of his remarks was commendatory.
- (n.) Accent or inflection or modulation of the voice, as adapted to express emotion or passion.
- (n.) A whining style of speaking; a kind of mournful or artificial strain of voice; an affected speaking with a measured rhythm ahd a regular rise and fall of the voice; as, children often read with a tone.
- (n.) State of mind; temper; mood.
- (n.) The larger kind of interval between contiguous sounds in the diatonic scale, the smaller being called a semitone as, a whole tone too flat; raise it a tone.
- (n.) Tonicity; as, arterial tone.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
| APA | Webster's. (2011). Tone. Retrieved September 20, 2026, from http://smartdefine.org/tone/definitions/2073176 |
| Chicago | Webster's. 2011. "Tone" http://smartdefine.org/tone/definitions/2073176 (accessed September 20, 2026). |
| Harvard | Webster's 2011, Tone, Smart Define, viewed 20 September, 2026, <http://smartdefine.org/tone/definitions/2073176>. |
| MLA | Webster's. "Tone" 28 May 2011. Web. 20 September 2026. <http://smartdefine.org/tone/definitions/2073176> |