🎶 A plastic instrument 👩 A female name

Tonette

7.5

A small plastic wind instrument used to teach children music

noun

: tonette

In music class, the teacher handed each student a tonette to learn how to play simple melodies.

Examples

During the next year, the instrumental music director started a tonette class, and I got to enroll.

Academic text (2000)
(Of course, I realize now that the entire "tonette class" was another audition, or perhaps it was recruitment.)

Academic text (2000)
The children enjoyed practicing their skills on the tonette during their music lessons.
She taught her students to play a song on the tonette, making music fun and interactive.

How Simple

kazoo

11 7.9

Tonette

7.5

tin whistle

1 4.2

recorder

7 3.2

Western concert flute

Specialized

4.7

Surface Forms

Tonette singular

Tonettes plural

Morphology

Tonette = tone (transparent) = tone + ette

Formed from 'tone' + diminutive suffix '-ette'; the sense 'small/simple musical instrument' is directly inferable for learners familiar with 'tone' and '-ette'.

Etymology

Tonette comes from the word tone ('a sound') plus the small ending -ette ('small'), so it literally means a 'small sound-maker' and that fits a tiny plastic wind instrument used to teach children music.