tone of voice
28
3.1
- noun
- /toʊn əv vɔɪs/
:
tono de voz
- His tone of voice indicated that he was joking, even though his words were serious.
- calm tone of voice
- facial expressions and tone of voice
- body language and tone of voice
The other thing is pay deep attention to the tone of voice.
- The other thing is pay deep attention to the tone of voice.
- You know, and you can create a lot with body language and adjusting tone of voice.
- I can't see him and he's, like, threatening me or like, using a threatening tone of voice.
- She listens to what I say, not just the contents, but even more importantly, the tone of voice.
- And that's me being optimistic in a very, shall we say, non optimistic tone of voice.
- You know, he was an orator and, and then just things like his, his body language, his tone of voice, his facial expressions.
- When we tell the stories, when we conversate with her, we're also in our dialogue, changing our tone of voice.
- We can use a more emphatic tone of voice and even assume an appearance of being angry, but we don't want to actually be angry when we do this.
- Our year, is your tone of voice always at one pitch all the time?
- It influences and is influenced by tone of voice.
Examples
-
Don't take that tone of voice with me, sir.
-
I-I'm not sure I like your tone of voice.
-
So when I did that, his whole tone of voice changed.
-
And my whole tone of voice changes 'cause I could say, what did you mean?
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And my whole tone of voice changes because I could say, what did you mean?
-
Do not take that tone of voice...
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And talk in a normal tone of voice.
-
"Nothing," he said in a normal tone of voice, and no, he had not been drinking.
Fiction book (1990) -
Count it in the second location, he said, in a slightly less friendly tone of voice.
Academic text (2010) -
However, that message came through in a tone of voice that may not have been the one some people expected.
Academic text (2004)
Synonyms
497
3.5
How a person's voice shows their feelings or attitude
24
5.8
The main meaning of something said, written or done
12
5.9
How the voice changes in pitch or tone when speaking
7
4.6
The rise and fall of voice when speaking that shows meaning or feeling
2
6.3
A change in voice pitch or loudness to show feeling
1
6.8
The mood of sounds, especially a voice or music
How Emotional
28
3.1
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'the quality or character of a person's voice' is directly and compositionally derived from 'tone' (mood/attitude) + 'voice' (sound produced in speech), with 'of' serving only as a grammatical linker. This straightforward semantic combination is cross-linguistically common and would be immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows the constituent words.
Etymology
The phrase tone of voice may come from comparing a person's voice to music: different tones in music sound high or low, soft or sharp and give a clear feeling. So someone's tone of voice shows their 'emotion' or 'attitude' when they speak.