What is tone? It is impossible to give a short answer to this question. This is due to the fact that the word has a large number of interpretations. And also it is part of many phraseological units. Such as "mentoring tone", "bad taste" on "increased tones". For those who want to thoroughly understand what tone is, this article is written.
Sound Link
In these meanings, the word "tone" in the dictionary is considered in three ways.
- The first one refers to a sound that has a certain pitch.
- The second is used in medicine and denotes the sound that is produced by a beating heart or the one that is obtained when a doctor taps the internal organs.
- The third is a musical term and is interpreted as an interval of pitches, which is equal to two small seconds.
Usage examples:
- Tone is a subjective quality inherent in the human auditory experience, along with timbre and volume, which allows you to arrange all sounds on a scale - from low to high.
- The disciples were giventhe task is to figure out which tone in the passage that sounded was higher and which was lower.
- Having listened, the doctor realized that the heart sounds are clearly muffled.
- The accent of the second tone was markedly pronounced over the pulmonary artery.
- Intervals in a major ascending scale look like this: the first interval is equal to a tone, and the last interval is a semitone.
Tone like shade
There is also such a meaning of "tone". It is seen as a color and as a color shade.
Usage examples:
- Among the vast variety of colors that exist in the world around him, his world was painted, like in a silent movie, in black and white.
- Sergey's wife insisted on making a large room in bright colors.
- Andrey thought that bright, saturated tones would be more suitable for his picture.
- Hue is one of the three main characteristics of a color along with its lightness and saturation.
Figuratively
There are two shades of meaning here.
- The first is a description of the emotional coloring of speech.
- The second is the designation of the nature of behavior.
Usage examples:
- "And now I ask you to meet our dear guests," he said in the tone of an entertainer, and immediately the three important people he meant entered the hall.
- Vasiliev's gestures were precise and dry, and he delivered his speech as if withwith great effort, in a polite, icy tone.
- Igor was very nervous talking with the new boss, but, leaving his office, he pulled himself together, switched to a calm tone and left full of dignity.
- Joining a new company, Alexandrov asked his closest friend, Skorikov, to explain to him in more detail what is considered bad form among them, so as not to offend anyone in vain.
- His seemingly excessive intelligence was inspired by the rules of etiquette he learned from childhood.
- Not having time to properly remember the names of the new faces around him, Valery quickly, without any doubts, adopted a cheerful, friendly tone in dealing with them.
For a better understanding of what tone is, it would be advisable to familiarize yourself with its other interpretations.
Other values
In addition to those indicated above, there are also other interpretations of the word in question, which include the following.
- In linguistics, this is a change in pitch used to distinguish between meanings within morphemes, words, and syllables.
- Noble family, which is included in the Russian Empire in the General Armorial.
- Another name for a fish like tuna.
- Name of a commune located in the south-east of France, in the department of Haute-Savoie, Rhone-Alpes region.
- Vietnamese surname (clan), which corresponds to the Korean surname Gong and Chinese Sun, literally translated as "grandson". This was the surname of the second (last) Vietnamese President Ton Duc Thang.
- TON is an abbreviation thatstands for "official nationality theory".
Better to learn what tone is, acquaintance with the origin of the studied lexeme will help.
Etymology
It comes from the ancient Greek noun τόνος, meaning "tension", "tone". The latter, in turn, was formed from the verb τείνω, which translates as “I pull”. This verb goes back to the Proto-Indo-European stem tenw.
The Russian word "tone" came to us during the time of Peter the Great. As suggested by a number of researchers, it was formed from the German Ton. Other scholars believe that it is borrowed from French and was formed from the existing there ton, which comes from the Latin tonus.
