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intonation

   Also found in: Encyclopedia, Wikipedia 0.10 sec.
in·to·na·tion  (nt-nshn, -t-)
n.
1.
a. The act of intoning or chanting.
b. An intoned utterance.
2. A manner of producing or uttering tones, especially with regard to accuracy of pitch.
3. Linguistics The use of changing pitch to convey syntactic information: a questioning intonation.
4. A use of pitch characteristic of a speaker or dialect: "He could hear authority, the old parish intonation coming back into his voice" Graham Greene.
5. Music The opening phrase of a plainsong composition sung as a solo part.

into·nation·al adj.

intonation
Noun
1. the sound pattern produced by variations in the voice
2. the act of intoning
3. Music the ability to play or sing in tune
intonational adj
ThesaurusLegend:  Synonyms Related Words Antonyms
Noun1.intonation - rise and fall of the voice pitch
prosody, inflection - the patterns of stress and intonation in a language
intonation pattern - intonations characteristic of questions and requests and statements
droning, monotone, drone - an unchanging intonation
singsong - a regular and monotonous rising and falling intonation
2.intonation - singing by a soloist of the opening piece of plainsong
singing, vocalizing - the act of singing vocal music
3.intonationintonation - the act of singing in a monotonous tone
singing, vocalizing - the act of singing vocal music
cantillation - liturgical chanting
4.intonation - the production of musical tones (by voice or instrument); especially the exactitude of the pitch relations
music - musical activity (singing or whistling etc.); "his music was his central interest"
fixed intonation - the intonation of keyboard instruments where the pitch of each note is fixed and cannot be varied by the performer

intonation
noun 2. incantation, spell, charm, formula, chant, invocation, hex U.S., Canad. (informal) conjuration
Translations
Spanish intonation [ɪntəuˈneɪʃən] nentonación f
French intonation [ɪntəuˈneɪʃən] nintonation f
German intonation [ɪntəuˈneɪʃən] nIntonation f
Italian intonation [ɪntəuˈneɪʃən] nintonazione f

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? Mentioned in ? References in classic literature
 
His mother had two long conversations with Mills on his passage through Paris and had heard of me (I knew how that thick man could speak of people, he interjected ambiguously) and his mother, with an insatiable curiosity for anything that was rare (filially humorous accent here and a softer flash of teeth), was very anxious to have me presented to her(courteous intonation, but no teeth).
For the iambic is, of all measures, the most colloquial: we see it in the fact that conversational speech runs into iambic lines more frequently than into any other kind of verse; rarely into hexameters, and only when we drop the colloquial intonation.
From the intonation of the words, she guessed, with her woman's quick intuition, at their meaning; but she quite failed to follow, when, becoming more pressing, he continued to urge his suit in a mixture of the grossest animal passion and ridiculous threats.
 
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