intone
/ɪnˈtoʊn/verb
to speak or sing in a measured tone
From Latin in- (in) + Latin, from Ancient Greek tonus (strain).
Lineage
in-
tonus
-ō
The story
Picture a medieval cantor preparing to launch a hymn: he is not merely making noise, but placing his voice into a particular tone. That idea lies behind Medieval Latin intonare, “to sing according to tone,” built from in- and tonus, the word for tension or pitch. Tonus came from Greek τόνος, literally something stretched—an excellent image for a tightened string vibrating into music. By the late fourteenth century, English speakers had reshaped Old French entoner into entune and entone, eventually settling on intone. So when a lecturer intones a warning, the word still carries a faint memory of a singer stretching sound into the right pitch.
Modern usage
to understand, interpret, pick up on, or resonate with
- Heard in
- informal slang
- See
- Urban Dictionary entry using intone in the sense “to understand” or “pick up on”
Words from the same roots
in- · Latin, ‘in, into; here marking entry into a tone or vocal mode’
Derivedintonation, intonate, incite, incline
tonus · Latin, from Ancient Greek, ‘strain, tension, pitch, tone’