Word.ws English Dictionary

subtone

subtone noun: a secondary or lesser tone (in sound or colour).

Noun

subtone (plural subtones)

  1. A secondary or lesser tone (in sound or colour).
    • It had a slight rasp, soft subtones in the low notes and even control through the registers; he scattered stylized shakes of vibrato all through his playing.2007 July 20, Ben Ratliff, “Sounds to Quiet a Crowd While Recalling Faded Times”, in New York Times

Forms of subtone

pluralsubtones

Origin of subtone

From sub- + tone.

Questions about subtone

What does subtone mean?
Subtone means a secondary or lesser tone (in sound or colour).
What part of speech is subtone?
Subtone is a noun.
What is the plural of subtone?
The plural of subtone is subtones.

Words near subtone in the dictionary

  1. subtomentose
  2. subtomogram
  3. subtomograms
  4. subtomographic
  5. subtonal
  6. subtone
  7. subtones
  8. subtongue
  9. subtongues
  10. subtonic
  11. subtonics

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: subtone (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.

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