Monotone

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WOTD - 12 September 2007    

English

Adjective

Monotone (comparative more Monotone, superlative most Monotone)

  1. (of speech or a sound) having a single unvaried pitch
    • 1799, John Walker, Elements of Elocution, Cooper and Wilson, page 309:
      It is no very difficult matter to be loud in a high tone of voice; but to be loud and forcible in a low tone, requires great practice and management; this, however, may be facilitated by pronouncing forcibly at firſt in a low monotone; a monotone, though in a low key, and without force, is much more ſonorous and audible than when the voice ſlides up and down at almoſt every word, as it muſt do to be various.
    • 1940, Asiatic Society (Calcutta, Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, India), Journal of the Asiatic Society, page 95:
      The prominence of the syllables is more monotone than in English, the intonation of the latter having a larger variation of stressed and unstressed syllables.
    • 1998, Roger W. Shuy, Bureaucratic Language in Government and Business, Georgetown University Press, Research on Telephone vs. In-Person Administrative Hearings, page 76:
      In the formal register, such variation is reduced and the talk has a more monotone, business-like quality.
  2. (of mathematics) property of a function to be either decreasing or increasing
    • The function <math>f(x):=x^3</math> is monotone while <math>g(x):=x^2</math> is not.

Noun

Monotone (plural Monotones)
  1. A single unvaried tone of speech or a sound
    When Tima felt like her parents were treating her like a servant, she would speak in monotone and act as though she were a robot.

Derived terms

Verb

Monotone (third-person singular simple present Monotones, present participle monotoning, simple past and past participle monotoned)

  1. (ambitransitive) To speak in a monotone.

Adjectives for Monotone

solemn; enchanting; dolorous; maddening; chanting; soothing; weirdly-spoken; mumbling; eternal; indistinguishable.

Thesaurus

AF, Indian file, alliterating, alliteration, alliterative, array, articulation, assonance, assonant, audio frequency, banausic, bank, belabored, blah, buzz, catena, catenation, chain, chain reaction, chaining, chanting, chime, chiming, cliche-ridden, clockwork regularity, concatenation, connection, consecution, constancy, continuum, course, cycle, daily round, descent, dim, dingdong, dreary, drone, droning, endless belt, endless round, even pace, even tenor, file, filiation, frequency, fundamental, fundamental tone, gamut, gradation, harmonic, harping, hum, humdrum, intonation, invariability, jingle, jingle-jangle, jog-trot, labored, line, lineage, monologue, monotonic, monotonous, monotonousness, monotony, near rhyme, nexus, orderliness, overtone, partial, partial tone, pedestrian, pendulum, periodicity, pitch, pitter-patter, plenum, poky, powder train, progression, queue, range, rank, recurrence, regularity, repeated sounds, repetitiousness, repetitiveness, reticulation, rhyme, rhymed, rhyming, rotation, round, routine, row, run, sameliness, sameness, scale, sequence, series, single file, singsong, slant rhyme, smoothness, soniferous, sonorous, sounded, sounding, spectrum, stale repetition, stodgy, string, succession, swath, tedious, tedium, thread, tier, tonal, tone, toneless, tonelessness, train, treadmill, trot, undeviation, undifferentiation, unnecessary repetition, unvariation, windrow

Etymology

From the post-Classical Latin monotonus (“unvarying in tone”) or its etymon the Koine Greek μονότονος (monotonos, “steady”, “unwavering”); compare cognate adjectives, namely the French monotone, the German monoton, the Italian monotono, and the Spanish monótono, as well as the slightly earlier English noun monotony and adjective monotonical.

Pronunciation

Translations

Adjective

Translations

French

Adjective

Monotone m. (f. monotone, m. plural Monotones, f. plural monotones)

  1. Monotone
  2. Whose speech is monotone.
  3. Boring due to uniformity or lack of variety; monotonous.

Pronunciation

Italian

Adjective

monotone f.

  1. Feminine plural form of monotono
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