tonal

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈtoʊnəl/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈtəʊnəl/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊnəl

From tone +‎ -al.

tonal (comparative more tonal, superlative most tonal)

1. Of or relating to tones or tonality.
2. Of or relating to the general character, mood, or trend of something.
   • 2011 December 5, James Poniewozik, “Boardwalk Empire Watch: Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?”, in Time‎^[1]:

     The lurid way the story played out felt like a tonal shift for Empire, but not necessarily a bad one—in the process of shedding its cool costume-drama attitude for grotesque family dysfunction, the episode felt for once less like a story about Prohibition and more one about a specific set of people.

3. (music) Employing tones that have a predictable relationship to some tonic.
4. (linguistics) Employing differences in pitch (tones) to distinguish differences in the meaning of otherwise similar words (words which would otherwise be homophonic).

• atonal

• tonality
• tonally

From Nahuatl tōnalli (“day, day sign”).

• tona

tonal (plural tonals)

1. (in Mesoamerican mythology) An animal companion which accompanies a person from birth to death.
   • 1989, Robert Bartley Taylor, Indians of Middle America: an introduction to the ethnology of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, page 122:

     When a tonal suffers misfortune or death, the same thing happens to the person associated with it.

• tonalli

• nahual

• Alton, Laton, Talon, Tolan, Tolna, laton, notal, talon

• (Amecameca): tonatih
• (Milpa Alta): tonaltzintli

From Classical Nahuatl tonatiuh.

• IPA^(key): /toːˈna.l/

tonal

1. (Tlaxcala) sun

From ton +‎ -al.

• Audio:

  (file)

tonal (feminine tonale, masculine plural tonals or tonaux, feminine plural tonales)

1. tonal

• “tonal”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Ton +‎ -al

• IPA^(key): /toˈnaːl/

• Audio:

  (file)

tonal (strong nominative masculine singular tonaler, comparative tonaler, superlative am tonalsten)

1. tonal

• “tonal” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
• “tonal” in Uni Leipzig: Wortschatz-Lexikon
• “tonal” in Duden online

• to̱nal

tonal

1. sun

From Latin tonus +‎ -al.^[1][2]

• Rhymes: (Portugal) -al, (Brazil) -aw
• Hyphenation: to‧nal

tonal m or f (plural tonais, not comparable)

1. tonal

• tonalmente

Borrowed from French tonal. By surface analysis, ton (tone) +‎ -al.

tonal m or n (feminine singular tonală, masculine plural tonali, feminine and neuter plural tonale)

1. tonal

• atonal
• ton
• tonalitate

• IPA^(key): /toˈnal/ [t̪oˈnal]
• Rhymes: -al
• Syllabification: to‧nal

tonal m or f (masculine and feminine plural tonales)

1. tonal

• “tonal”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024