Definitions

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

  • noun The act of intoning or chanting.
  • noun An intoned utterance.
  • noun A manner of producing or uttering tones, especially with regard to accuracy of pitch.
  • noun Linguistics The use of changing pitch to convey syntactic information.
  • noun A use of pitch characteristic of a speaker or dialect.
  • noun Music The opening phrase of a plainsong composition sung as a solo part.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Utterance of tones; mode of enunciation; modulation of the voice in speaking; also, expression of sentiment or emotion by variations of tone: as, his intonation was resonant or harsh.
  • noun The act of intoning or speaking with the singing voice; specifically, the use of musical tones in ecclesiastical delivery: as, the intonation of the litany.
  • noun In music: The process or act of producing tones in general or a particular series of tones, like a scale, especially with the voice.
  • noun In plain-song, the two or more notes leading up to the dominant or reciting-tone of a chant or melody, and usually sung by but one or a few voices. The proper intonation varies with the mode used, and also with the text to be sung.
  • noun A thundering; thunder.

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

  • noun The act of sounding the tones of the musical scale.
  • noun Singing or playing in good tune or otherwise.
  • noun Reciting in a musical prolonged tone; intonating, or singing of the opening phrase of a plain-chant, psalm, or canticle by a single voice, as of a priest. See intone, v. t.
  • noun The manner of speaking, especially the placement of emphasis, the cadence, and the rise and fall of the pitch of the voice while speaking.
  • noun obsolete A thundering; thunder.

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

  • noun A thundering; thunder.
  • noun linguistics The rise and fall of the voice in speaking.
  • noun The act of sounding the tones of the musical scale.
  • noun Singing or playing in good tune or otherwise.
  • noun Reciting in a musical prolonged tone; intonating or singing of the opening phrase of a plain-chant, psalm, or canticle by a single voice, as of a priest.

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

  • noun the act of singing in a monotonous tone
  • noun the production of musical tones (by voice or instrument); especially the exactitude of the pitch relations
  • noun rise and fall of the voice pitch
  • noun singing by a soloist of the opening piece of plainsong

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the verb intonate.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the verb intone.

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Examples

  • Anything sing-song falls into this category, such as the calling intonation of 'Come and ge-et it'.

    On speaking music DC 2010

  • My name is not that strange, but if the intonation is Swedish most people just can not make out the syllables.

    Isaac Asimov, rider x00c5;ka 2007

  • My name is not that strange, but if the intonation is Swedish most people just can not make out the syllables.

    Archive 2007-10-01 x00c5;ka 2007

  • The word for Lord is "chop" and the word for pig is "choooo," and the Chinese missionary made a mistake in intonation with the result that a cartoon appeared showing a man bowing down before a pig which had been nailed upon a cross.

    China—Its People and Their Life 1918

  • Example e) is valid as speech; its comma indicates the difference in intonation and the pause between preposition and adverb that I mentioned above, and the pronunciation difference (/u/and schwa) may also be heard.

    6 posts from February 2008 2008

  • Example e) is valid as speech; its comma indicates the difference in intonation and the pause between preposition and adverb that I mentioned above, and the pronunciation difference (/u/and schwa) may also be heard.

    Going on (adverbs and prepositions) 2008

  • Example e) is valid as speech; its comma indicates the difference in intonation and the pause between preposition and adverb that I mentioned above, and the pronunciation difference (/u/and schwa) may also be heard.

    Going on (adverbs and prepositions) 2008

  • There is a difference in intonation between a) and b), and in b) there is a lengthening of the on, possibly a different pronunciation of the to (/u/in a) and schwa in b)), and maybe a slight pause between on and to.

    Going on (adverbs and prepositions) 2008

  • There is a difference in intonation between a) and b), and in b) there is a lengthening of the on, possibly a different pronunciation of the to (/u/in a) and schwa in b)), and maybe a slight pause between on and to.

    Going on (adverbs and prepositions) 2008

  • There is a difference in intonation between a) and b), and in b) there is a lengthening of the on, possibly a different pronunciation of the to (/u/in a) and schwa in b)), and maybe a slight pause between on and to.

    6 posts from February 2008 2008

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