tenor of the conversation
- noun
:
tenor de la conversación
- However, the tenor of the conversation perhaps took more of a competitive turn as of Friday afternoon with the announcement of the veteran quarterback getting the start for the Chicago Bears this Monday night.
Examples
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How do you think that changed the tenor of the conversation and the way that people view WikiLeaks?
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The tenor of the conversation shifted dramatically when the moderator introduced the new topic.
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Listening to the tenor of the conversation, I realized that the group was increasingly frustrated with the delay.
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The friendly tenor of the conversation helped everyone feel comfortable sharing their opinions.
Synonyms
599
2.1
The general feeling of a person, group, or place at a time
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
How Friendly
103
1.0
16
1.0
22
4.4
509
3.2
147
4.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
tenor + of + the + conversation
The meaning 'general character or tone of a conversation' is directly and literally built from 'tenor' (general sense/prevailing tone) plus 'conversation' (dialogue), with 'of' marking the relationship, so the overall meaning is compositional. This structure is common cross-linguistically (e.g., 'tono de la conversación', 'ton de la conversation'), making it immediately understandable to a learner who knows the constituent words.
Etymology
The phrase tenor of the conversation comes from music, where tenor was the main singing voice that helped set a song's mood. So the tenor of a conversation means its general 'mood' or 'tone'.