intonation
n.n. the way you change your voice's pitch when you speak. It helps you show how you feel or what you mean, even if the words themselves are the same.
n. the variation in pitch and tone used in speech to convey meaning or emotion. It is a fundamental aspect of prosody that distinguishes different utterances and sentence types.
Her intonation changed when she realized she was being watched.
Non-native speakers often struggle with the correct intonation patterns required to sound natural in a new language.
While the lexical content of the two sentences was identical, the speaker's intonation suggested a significant difference in intent, shifting from a neutral statement to a rhetorical question.
From French intonation, from Medieval Latin intonatio, from intonō + -tiō.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Last updated May 20, 2026