tono-
AmericanUsage
What does tono- mean? Tono- is a combining form used like a prefix meaning “stretching,” “tension,” “tone.” It is occasionally used in a variety of scientific terms, especially in medicine and biology. In this combining form, tone can refer variously to muscle tone or musical tone, depending on context.Tono- comes from the Greek tónos, meaning “tone.” Discover more about this term at our entry for tone.What are variants of tono-?When combined with words or word elements that begin with a vowel, tono- becomes ton-, as in toneme.
Etymology
Origin of tono-
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The music is so overwhelmingly beautiful that Toño declares his mission to bring Lalo’s genius to the world’s attention and, by doing so, to spotlight the overlooked cultural splendor of his country.
As music “that transcended enmities to forge a connection between all the people born of this land,” Vargas Llosa writes, channeling Toño’s enthusiasm, the vals is the exemplary art form of a “mongrel nation.”
Toño is a wonderful character, a Quixote-like figure who is laughably naive yet strangely compelling.
The surprise success goes immediately to Toño’s head, and Vargas Llosa is very funny about the backlash that ensues when a fringe scholar is nudged into the mainstream.
Toño’s specialty is Peru’s Creole scene, which makes him an object of mockery among the high-minded musicologists in the academy and, given his intellectual pretensions, an equally risible figure in Lima’s back-alley bars where the music is performed.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
