OVERTONE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Overtone

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/ˈoʊvərtˌoʊn/ Listen

Overtone

noun

(usually plural) an ulterior implicit meaning or quality.

A harmonic with a frequency that is a multiple of the fundamental frequency. Synonyms: partial, partial tone.

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"Overtone" Quotes from Famous Books

... aghast for a moment when that crash of noise broke around them; but they came from a life where there was nothing of beauty except the lonely strength of the mountains and the appalling silences of the stars that roll above the desert. Almost at once they caught the overtone of human joyousness, and they turned with smiles to each other, and it was "Pierre?" "Jack?" Then a nod, and she was in his arms, and they ...

— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... upon it now. His voice roared again as it had done so many times before through the Tonah Basin camp. It reached to every listening ear where crowding men stood hushed and motionless; and the overtone of terror that altered its customary timber ...

— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... optical image of that carving knife cutting into the skin of the wrist, only with the difference that it seldom was found in both arms, usually in the one or the other. The sensation became a strictly tactual one with optical overtone, but there was no emotion in it. The pain element had disappeared. Also the shock, which still recurred in the first days slowly disappeared. The longer the symptom lasted, the more the optical factor faded away, and the tactual factor came into the foreground after three or four weeks. ...

— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... nuclear-battery motor didn't conk; the vehicle could almost fly without guidance. It was good to look down at the blue-green shagginess, below... Familiarity bred, not contempt, but a decline of dread to the point where it became a pleasant thrill—an overtone to the process of falling in love. Otherwise, perhaps they led each other on, into incaution. Out in the lonely fastnesses of Mars they seemed to find the sort of peace and separation from danger on the hectic Earth that the settlers had ...

— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... through the gate. The silence was uncanny. Since the war began this factory had never been idle. Thousands of cannon made; contracts for countless more! But now quiet, save for an undescribable, whispering overtone that seemed to permeate ...

— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham