How to use intonation in a sentence
20 example sentences · noun
Intonation means the rise and fall of the voice in speaking. Example: “Her intonation was false.”
Examples of intonation by meaning
nounSinging or playing in good tune or otherwise.
- Her intonation was false.
More sentences with intonation
- The actor spoke his lines artificially, with too much intonation.From the entry artificially
- Mork played with soulful intensity (and impeccable intonation), and the interplay between him and Mr.2013 August 18, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, “Unloading the Weightiness of Brahms With a Few Flicks”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry sprezzatura
- This impression is due to certain segmental features (nonrhoticity, vowel quality), but also to sentence intonation patterns.2007, Daniel Long, English on the Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands. From the entry nonrhoticity
- Moreover, the range of available expression involves supralinguistic effects such as intonation and bodily movements.1993, Linda Lomperis, Sarah Stanbury, Feminist approaches to the body in medieval literature. From the entry supralinguistic
- I would like to have heard his intonation delicately nuanced so as to carry the greatest punch.1989, R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word: 1-9:1. From the entry nuanced
- With its slow and exaggerated intonations, motherese speeds language learning by providing input that is easier for infants to process.2016, Joseph Henrich, chapter 13, in The Secret of Our Success […] , Princeton: Princeton University Press, →ISBN. From the entry motherese
- In informal style questions the ka question particle is omitted and interrogativity is mainly accomplished through intonation and Wh-question words.2015, Lidia Tanaka, “Nourishing the Friendship: Questions in Friends’ Talk”, in Japanese Questions: Discourse, Context and Language…. From the entry wh-question
- The ultimate game of belief is an unstoppable intonation.2012, John Trevillian, Forever A-Men. From the entry spacescraper
- By the age of one year the child is babbling with varying intonation patterns, accompanied by extensive kinesic and vocalizational activity.1929, The Encyclopaedia Britannica. From the entry vocalizational
- But the word carries darker intonations.2025 July 29, Jesse McKinley, “David Geffen’s Divorce Gives New Meaning to Hypergamy”, in The New York Times. From the entry hypergamy
- In the phrase 'ida(g) vi lovade' (today we promised), typical Scanian intonation would gradually decline across the phrase and include two peaks and troughs.2019, Nathan Joel Young, Rhythm in late-modern Stockholm: Social stratification and stylistic variation in the speech of men, BOOKS on…. From the entry multiethnolectal
- This synthesizer is by far the best I have heard, because it varies the intonation, and does not speak like a Dalek.p. 1996, Together with English Core, fourteenth edition (Rachna Sagar Pvt. Ltd.), page 234. From the entry dalek
- The expressive power of intonation in communication with preverbal infants was a topic of considerable interest in the early literature on language acquisition.1989, Anne Fernald, “Intonation and Communicative Intent in Mothers' Speech to Infants: Is the Melody the Message?”, in Child Development…. From the entry preverbal
- Thus the title of his paper at Royaumont has a Husserlian ring, but a peculiarly Wildian intonation: “L'anthropologie philosophique et la crise des sciences européennes.”1989, James M. Edie, “John Wild and Phenomenology”, in Eugene F. Kaelin, Calvin O. Schrag, editors, American Phenomenology: Origins and…. From the entry Husserlian
- 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.1940, Asiatic Society (Calcutta, Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, India), Journal of the Asiatic Society, page 95. From the entry monotone
- Epiploce generally, and more specifically the particular interplay we have been examining beetween a metrically determined and a phrasally determined scansion, creates and organizes variations in stress and intonation.2011, R. Bruce Elder, The Films of Stan Brakhage in the American Tradition of Ezra Pound, Gertrude stein and Charles Olson, page 53. From the entry epiploce
- Another way fathers impact sons is that sons, once their voices have changed in puberty, invariably answer the telephone with the same locutions and intonations of their fathers.1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN. From the entry locution
- But an important minor triad, D F A, is harsh in just intonation, and other unsatisfactory triads result when this tuning is extended to the complete chromatic scale.1948 November, J.M. Barbour, “Music and Ternary Continued Fractions”, in American Mathematical Monthly, volume 55, number 9, page 545. From the entry minor
- We may then summarize the usual defects of speech which characterize barbaralalia as follows: (1) sound substitutions (2) sound additions (3) sound omissions (4) misplaced stress (5) incorrect intonation.1936, Herbert Koepp-Baker, A Handbook of Clinical Speech, volume 2, page 300. From the entry barbaralalia
Meaning of intonation
- noun The rise and fall of the voice in speaking.
- noun Emotive stress used to increase the power of delivery in speech.
- noun A sound made by, or resembling that made by, a musical instrument.
Questions about intonation in a sentence
- How do you use intonation in a sentence?
- Intonation is used as a noun. For example: “Her intonation was false.”
- What is a short sentence with intonation?
- “Her intonation was false.”
- What does intonation mean?
- Intonation means the rise and fall of the voice in speaking.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: intonation (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use intonation in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/intonation. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
