Tune

How to spell tune

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tune

What does tune mean?

1. nounA succession of musical notes forming a recognisable melody.
2. verbTo adjust a musical instrument, engine, or receiver to the correct pitch, performance, or frequency.

Tune in a sentence

• noun

  She hummed a cheerful tune while washing the dishes.

• verb

  The guitarist paused to tune each string before the show.

• noun

  The old folk tune had been passed down for generations.

• verb

  A good mechanic can tune the engine so it runs smoothly.

Where does tune come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word 'tune' is essentially a medieval English variant of 'tone', which came into English from the Latin 'tonus', meaning 'a sound' or 'a pitch', itself borrowed from the Greek 'tonos', meaning 'a stretching' or 'tension'. The Greek sense reflects the physical reality of music: a string stretched tighter produces a higher pitch, so 'tension' and 'pitch' were naturally linked. By the late 1300s English speakers were writing 'tune' alongside 'tone', and over time the spelling with 'u' settled into its own meaning of a melody or the act of setting pitch correctly. The verb sense, meaning to adjust an instrument so its notes are true, appeared soon after, and centuries later it stretched comfortably to engines and radios. The spelling trap is small but real: the silent final 'e' and the 'u' that an American voice often pronounces as a plain 'oo' rather than the British 'yoo'.

How the word is built

• tune (single root, a variant of 'tone')