tone deafness

1. 1.

   an inability to distinguish differences in pitch

   Synonymstin ear

   Broaderdeafness

Questions about tone deafness

What does tone deafness mean?

tone deafness means "an inability to distinguish differences in pitch".

What is another word for tone deafness?

Close synonyms include tin ear. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is tone deafness a common word?

tone deafness is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.