TONE DOWN • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Tone down

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/toʊn daʊn/ Listen

verb

Tone v. t. (past & past part. toned; pres. part. toning)

To utter with an affected tone.

To give tone, or a particular tone, to; to tune. See Tune, v. t.

(Photog.) To bring, as a print, to a certain required shade of color, as by chemical treatment.

To tone down.

(a)

To cause to give lower tone or sound; to give a lower tone to.

(b)

(Paint.) To modify, as color, by making it less brilliant or less crude; to modify, as a composition of color, by making it more harmonius. "Its thousand hues toned down harmoniusly."

(c)

Fig.: To moderate or relax; to diminish or weaken the striking characteristics of; to soften. "The best method for the purpose in hand was to employ some one of a character and position suited to get possession of their confidence, and then use it to tone down their religious strictures."

To tone up, to cause to give a higher tone or sound; to give a higher tone to; to make more intense; to heighten; to strengthen.

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Etymology of 'Tone down'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tone down" Quotes from Famous Books

... Newman, an unusually metaphysical flight; but in passing through Milan he had taken a great fancy to the painter. "There you are again!" said Mr. Babcock. "Yes, we had better separate." And on the morrow he retraced his steps and proceeded to tone down his impressions of the ...

— The American • Henry James

... guess I have been on the jump for two years. Haven't made myself famous yet, and a little of my enthusiasm in that line has dribbled away; but I'm just as determined to work in the field of research as ever; only age is beginning to tone down my earlier wild notions, and after this last and crowning folly I think I shall hitch up with some veteran who knows it all, and be content to ...

— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... claims as his chief adviser, but he surrounded himself with reforming ecclesiastics from beyond the Alps. Thus fortified he issued edicts against simoniacal and married clergy; but finding that their literal fulfilment would have emptied all existing offices, he was obliged to tone down his original threats and to allow clergy guilty of simony to atone their fault by an ample penance. But Leo's contribution to the building up of the papal power was his personal appearance, not as a suppliant but as a ...

— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... a picture of manners not unlike those of the Afghan tribes, though very differently treated. The poet is at no pains to put on any moral varnish, or to tone down the roughness romantically; because he is writing, or reciting, for people of much the same way of thinking as his heroes, who are fierce chiefs quarrelling over captured women; and the whole plot is developed by sheer pressure of circumstance and character. ...

— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... Miss Twinkleton to tone down the public mind of the Nuns' House. That lady, therefore, entering in a stately manner what plebeians might have called the school-room, but what, in the patrician language of the head of the Nuns' House, was euphuistically, ...

— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

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