Tonus

noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    tonicity; tone countable, uncountable

    "muscular tonus"

  2. 2
    the elastic tension of living muscles, arteries, etc. that facilitate response to stimuli wordnet
  3. 3
    A tonal system or mode used in Gregorian chant. countable, uncountable

    "Aurelian associates antiphons and toni of the plain chant, so that the octave-based Pythagorean scale is exemlified by means of the liturgical chant, with the outstanding consequence that church music becomes the sounding representation of the harmony of the spherese and of human beings."

Synonyms

All synonyms
tonicityadaptabilitybouncebouncinessbuoyancebuoyancy

Example

More examples

"The amount of stretch possible increases with the range in the joint and decreases with the cross section of the muscle and the amount of tonus or contraction in these antagonists ."

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin tonus (“strain, tension”). Doublet of tone.

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