Definition of tone

• the quality of a persons voice; "he began in a conversational tone"; "he spoke in a nervous tone of voice"
• (linguistics) a pitch or change in pitch of the voice that serves to distinguish words in tonal languages; "the Beijing dialect uses four tones"
• (music) the distinctive property of a complex sound (a voice or noise or musical sound); "the timbre of her soprano was rich and lovely"; "the muffled tones of the broken bell summoned them to meet"