tone

«tone» in Mova's school dictionary: the way something sounds, like a voice that is kind… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a tone, tones; tone); verb (tone, tones, toned, toning)

meaning for a pupil

1) Tone is the way something sounds, like a voice that is kind, angry or bossy. tree →

2) A tone is a single musical sound or a beep, like a phone's dial tone. tree →

3) A tone is a shade of a colour, lighter or darker. tree →

4) The tone of a piece of writing is its mood or feeling. tree →

5) To tone (or tone up) muscles is to make them firmer with exercise; to «tone down» is to make something less strong. tree →

sense in the lessons

In English lessons, pupils study the tone of a story or poem: happy, sad, spooky or serious. In manners lessons, «tone of voice» matters: the same words can be polite or rude. In art, tones are light and dark shades. In music, a tone is a step between notes. Phrases: «tone of voice», «don't use that tone», «tone down».

examples

• Don't speak to me in that tone. tree →
• Her tone was kind and gentle. tree →
• The poem has a sad tone. tree →
• Leave a message after the tone. tree →
• The artist used different tones of blue. tree →
• Please tone down the music; it's too loud. tree →
• Swimming tones your muscles. tree →
• You can tell he's joking from his tone. tree →
• Finally some one asked, in a sympathetic tone: tree →

note

Countable (a tone, tones) and uncountable (tone of voice). Do not confuse «tone» with «tune» (a melody). «Tone deaf» means not able to hear the difference between musical notes; it also means not noticing how others feel.

In the corpora

• Companies update their bots, so a bot's tone and "personality" can change.
• Some border collies have learned the names of over a thousand toys, but most dogs understand tone of voice more than exact words.
• We write what you hear in pinyin, with little tone marks showing whether the voice stays high, rises, dips or falls.
• nǎr (where?) dips and nàr (there) falls; only the tone tells the two apart.
• mǎi (dipping) is to buy and mài (falling) is to sell; only the tone tells these opposites apart.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «tone» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.