Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of equal tension.
  • adjective Isosmotic.
  • adjective Having the same concentration of solutes as the blood.
  • adjective Physiology Of or involving muscular contraction in which the muscle remains under relatively constant tension while its length changes.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having or indicating equal tones.
  • In physical chemistry, possessing or producing equal osmotic pressures; especially, having salts dissolved in such proportion as to occasion no change of volume in red blood-corpuscles put in contact with the solution.
  • Relating to isotonia.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Having or indicating, equal tones, or tension.
  • adjective (Physiology, Biochemistry) Having an osmotic pressure (tonicity) equal to that of a reference solution; -- of aqueous solutions. Contrasting with hypotonic and hypertonic. See hypertonic.
  • adjective (Mus.) a system consisting of intervals, in which each concord is alike tempered, and in which there are twelve equal semitones.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective of two solutions having the same osmotic pressure
  • adjective of a medical solution Having the same concentration of solutes as human blood.
  • adjective of two muscles having equal tension
  • adjective physiology Of or involving muscular contraction against resistance in which the length of the muscle changes. Antonym is isometric. Isotonic movements are either concentric (working muscle shortens) or eccentric (working muscle lengthens). See also Wikipedia:Isotonic (exercise physiology)

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or involving muscular contraction in which tension is constant while length changes
  • adjective of two or more muscles; having equal tension
  • adjective relating to or characterized by the equal intervals of a musical scale
  • adjective (used of solutions) having the same or equal osmotic pressure

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[iso– + Greek tonos, tension; see tone + –ic.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

iso- +‎ tonic

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Examples

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  • Online Dictionary. Having the same concentration of solutes as the blood: an isotonic saline solution.

    October 7, 2010