Halftone

Quick meaning: Halftone is a noun meaning (music) Synonym of semitone, half the interval between two notes on a scale.

Meaning

(music) Synonym of semitone, half the interval between two notes on a scale.

More Meanings

1. (printing) A picture made by using the process of half-toning.
2. (art) An intermediate or middle tone in a painting, engraving, photograph, etc.; a middle tint, neither very dark nor very light.
3. To reproduce a photograph or other continuous tone image by the use of dots of various sizes.

Example Sentences

Before leaving New York a handsome booklet had been prepared and printed. The brochure contained the names of the commissioners, their public records, halftone portraits and a carefully prepared statement of the objects of the expedition.

“No, I cannot enjoy it,” Cecilia said to Mrs. Devereux; “I don't mind the grey light; cloud and water, and half-tones of colour, are homely English and pleasant, and that opal where the sun should be has a suggestiveness richer than sunlight.[…]”

That animals utter musical notes is familiar to every one, as we may daily hear in the singing of birds. It is a more remarkable fact that an ape, one of the Gibbons, produces an exact octave of musical sounds, ascending and descending the scale by half-tones; so that this monkey “alone of brute mammals may be said to sing.”

Word Forms

• halftones
• half-tone
• halftoning
• halftoned

Synonyms for halftone

Depending on context, synonyms include semitone, photoengraving.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include photoengraving, silhouette, vignette, half-tone, semitone, quartertone.

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