Monotone

//ˈmɒn.ə.təʊn// adj, noun, verb

adj, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A single unvaried tone of speech or a sound. countable, uncountable

    "When Tima felt like her parents were treating her like a servant, she would speak in monotone and act as though she were a robot."

  2. 2
    an unchanging intonation wordnet
  3. 3
    A piece of writing in one strain throughout. countable, uncountable
  4. 4
    a single tone repeated with different words or different rhythms (especially in rendering liturgical texts) wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    To speak in a monotone. ambitransitive
Adjective
  1. 1
    Having a single unvaried pitch.

    "The prominence of the syllables is more monotone than in English, the intonation of the latter having a larger variation of stressed and unstressed syllables."

  2. 2
    Of a function: that is always nonincreasing or nondecreasing on an interval.

    "The function f(x)#58;#61;x³ is monotone on #92;R, while g(x)#58;#61;x² is not."

  3. 3
    Synonym of monochrome.
Adjective
  1. 1
    sounded or spoken in a tone unvarying in pitch wordnet
  2. 2
    of a sequence or function; consistently increasing and never decreasing or consistently decreasing and never increasing in value wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
monotonicmonotonousafalliteratingalliterationalliterative

Example

More examples

"He read the poem in a monotone."

Etymology

From the post-Classical Latin monotonus (“unvarying in tone”) or its etymon the Ancient Greek μονότονος (monótonos, “steady”, “unwavering”); compare cognate adjectives, namely the French monotone, the German monoton, the Italian monotono, and the Spanish monótono, as well as the slightly earlier English noun monotony and adjective monotonical.

Related phrases

monotone convergence theoremmonotone functionmonotone function

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Next best steps

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.