Word.ws English Dictionary

Shepard tone

Shepard tone noun: a superposition of sine waves, separated by an octave, whose relative amplitude may be varied to give the illusion of a rising or falling note.

Noun

Shepard tone (plural Shepard tones)

  1. A superposition of sine waves, separated by an octave, whose relative amplitude may be varied to give the illusion of a rising or falling note.

Forms of Shepard tone

pluralShepard tones

Origin of Shepard tone

For Roger Shepard, American scientist.

Questions about Shepard tone

What does Shepard tone mean?
Shepard tone means a superposition of sine waves, separated by an octave, whose relative amplitude may be varied to give the illusion of a rising or falling note.
What part of speech is Shepard tone?
Shepard tone is a noun.
What is the plural of Shepard tone?
The plural of Shepard tone is Shepard tones.

Words near Shepard tone in the dictionary

  1. Sheopur
  2. shep
  3. shepard
  4. Shepard scale
  5. Shepard scales
  6. Shepard tone
  7. Shepard tones
  8. Shepardian
  9. Shepardson
  10. Shepardsons
  11. shepe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Shepard tone (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Shepard tone.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shepard_tone. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.