Word.ws English Dictionary

tone policed

tone policed is the simple past and past participle of tone police.

Meaning of tone police

Verb

tone police (third-person singular simple present tone polices, present participle tone policing, simple past and past participle tone policed)

  1. (derogatory, slang) To complain about the tone of one or more participants in a debate or discussion, especially one perceived as heated, disrespectful, etc.
    • Many white women will tone police, dominate conversation, and then when challenged follow the following playbook[…]2017, Fobazi M. Ettarh, “Equality is not Pie; Libraries and the Insidiousness of Subtle Racism”, in fobaziettarh.com

Questions about tone policed

What is tone policed the simple past and past participle of?
Tone policed is the simple past and past participle of tone police.

Words near tone policed in the dictionary

  1. tone painting
  2. tone paintings
  3. tone poem
  4. tone poems
  5. tone police
  6. tone policed
  7. tone polices
  8. tone policing
  9. tone ring
  10. tone sandhi
  11. tone scale

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tone policed (page history and authors); tone police (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: “tone policed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tone_policed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.