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say it: tohn
tone is a noun and verb meaning "the quality of a person's voice". It is pronounced /ˈtoʊn/ — tohn. It carries 15 recorded senses.
the quality of a person's voice
“he began in a conversational tone”
“he spoke in a nervous tone of voice”
(linguistics) a pitch or change in pitch of the voice that serves to distinguish words in tonal languages
“the Beijing dialect uses four tones”
linguistics
(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”
music
a notation representing the pitch and duration of a musical sound
“the singer held the note too long”
the elastic tension of living muscles, arteries, etc. that facilitate response to stimuli
“the doctor tested my tonicity”
muscle
a musical interval of two semitones
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”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for tone come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.