tonus

1. 1.

   the elastic tension of living muscles, arteries, etc. that facilitate response to stimuli

   “the doctor tested my tonicity”

   Synonymstonicitytone

   Broadertension

   Narrowercatatoniamuscular tonusmyotoniahypertoniahypotonia

   muscle

Other forms of tonus

plural

tonuses·

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.

Questions about tonus

What does tonus mean?

tonus means "the elastic tension of living muscles, arteries, etc. that facilitate response to stimuli".

How many syllables are in tonus?

tonus has 2 syllables: to-nus. The stress falls on "to".

What is another word for tonus?

Close synonyms include tonicity, tone. 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 tonus a common word?

tonus 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.