Definitions

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

  • adjective Of or relating to tones, a tone, or tonality.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In music, of or pertaining to tones.
  • Pertaining to tonality: as, a tonal fugue.
  • Of or pertaining to muscular tonicity.

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

  • noun An animal companion which accompanies a person from birth to death.
  • adjective Of or relating to tones or tonality.
  • adjective music Employing tones that have a predictable relationship to some tonic.
  • adjective linguistics Employing differences in pitch (tones) to distinguish differences in the meaning of otherwise similar words (words which would otherwise be homophonic).

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

  • adjective employing variations in pitch to distinguish meanings of otherwise similar words
  • adjective having tonality; i.e. tones and chords organized in relation to one tone such as a keynote or tonic

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Nahuatl tōnalli ("day, day sign")

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

tone +‎ -al

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word tonal.

Examples

  • I would probably "ground" the audience in tonal conventional music sounds during the real-world part of Zann and move them into atonal "out-there" sounds when that window opens (if I am recalling the story correctly).

    Lovecraft Paragraphs : The Lovecraft News Network 2009

  • I would probably "ground" the audience in tonal conventional music sounds during the real-world part of Zann and move them into atonal "out-there" sounds when that window opens (if I am recalling the story correctly).

    Archive 2009-08-01 2009

  • Tonality and atonality (as syntaxes) may be anathema to one another, but the relationship between consonance and dissonance in tonal music is a defining characteristic of tonality.

    Spark plugs and transmissions Matthew Guerrieri 2008

  • When you hear someone use the word tonal to describe an outfit’s color scheme, they are referring to looks like this one.

    Book Excerpt: ‘Life in Color’ 2009

  • When you consider that between Spanish, English and Arabic, well over half of the planet doesn't speak a tonal language, that puts Chinese at a serious competative disadvantage.

    Kaplin's Simplifiid Speling, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • Project of a new system of arithmetic, weight, measure, and coins, proposed to be called the tonal system, with sixteen to the base.

    A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) Augustus De Morgan 1838

  • One of the cleanest and most interesting re-appropriations I've seen recently with the notion of tonal achieving increasingly good results across the board.

    Hypebeast 2008

  • Rather, they constitute an inexplicable wave of energy which the Toltecs called the tonal and the nagual.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows 2008

  • But despite these several narrators and their widely differing stories, a kind of tonal monotony lies across the novel, which is devoid of the charming humor that leavened "The History of Love."

    Ron Charles reviews "Great House," by Nicole Krauss Ron Charles 2010

  • But despite these several narrators and their widely differing stories, a kind of tonal monotony lies across the novel, which is devoid of the charming humor that leavened "The History of Love."

    Ron Charles reviews "Great House," by Nicole Krauss Ron Charles 2010

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.