Tonal

How to spell tonal

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tonal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tonal mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the pitch, sound quality, or arrangement of musical or vocal tones, or to shades of colour.

Tonal in a sentence

• The choir worked for hours to correct their tonal balance.

• The designer chose a soft tonal palette for the bedroom walls.

Where does tonal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on 'tone', which English took from the Latin tonus, meaning a 'sound', 'note', or 'stretching of a string'. The Latin word was itself borrowed from the Greek tonos, which literally meant 'tension' or 'a tightening', the idea being that a tightly stretched string produces a higher pitch. The modern adjective 'tonal' was formed by attaching the everyday Latin suffix -alis (which gives us English -al, marking 'relating to') to the musical noun 'tone', and it appeared in English around the early nineteenth century, largely through writing about music. The same tonos root sits inside related words like 'tune', 'intonation', and 'monotone'. Because the word simply joins 'tone' to '-al', the single 'n' and the dropped silent 'e' are the only points where writers slip.

How the word is built

• ton- (from tone: a sound of definite pitch)
• -al (adjective suffix)