a. [f. TONE sb. + -LESS.] Destitute of tone.
1. Soundless, mute; of a body: without resonance.
1773. Kenrick, Rhet. Gram., ii. § 3, in Dict., 35. This sound … in oratorial and poetical stile … is contracted and rendered almost toneless in speech.
1899. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., VI. 129. The side of the chest is completely dull and toneless.
2. Having no distinctive quality; (a) of sound: without modulation or expression; (b) of color: dull.
(a) 1847. Fraser’s Mag., XXXVI. 105. The harsh roar of his toneless, irritating voice.
1861. C. W. S. Brooks, Silver Cord, viii. ‘Mrs. Empson is my aunt…,’ said Mrs. Berry, in a toneless voice.
(b) 1843. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., I. II. III. i. § 19. In paintings, they [the skies] are commonly toneless, crude, and wanting in depth and transparency. Ibid. (1856), III. IV. xv. § 6. The Apennine limestone is so grey and toneless.
1883. Grant White, W. Adams, 80. Her hair, a toneless brown.
3. Lacking tone in body or mind; void of energy; listless, dull.
1854. F. L. Mackenzie, in Miles, Mem. (1856), 263. Must I … withered, toneless … Trudge on through life.
1899. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., VI. 39. The fibres of the heart are not primarily diseased, but are merely more or less toneless and atrophied.
Hence Tonelessly adv.; Tonelessness.
1855. The Era, 17 June, 10/1. Tamburini resumed one of his very old parts—that of Figaro, which he played capitally, but sang tonelessly.
1873. Earle, Philol. Eng. Tongue (ed. 2), § 438. When this adverbial -ly was superadded to the adjectival the latter shrank into tonelessness.
1886. Adeline Sergeant, in North-Eastern Daily Gaz., 23 June, 4/3. Those rigid lines of iron and glass and the one bit of decided colour formed a refreshing contrast to the melancholy tonelessness of hue, the uncertainty of outline which characterised the buildings of Gibson’s-close.
1888. trans. Ibsen’s Ghosts (Camelot Classics), 198. Oswald (tonelessly as before) The Sun.
1891. G. Meredith, One of our Conq., II. v. 105. Her present tonelessness of blood and being.
1895. Zangwill, Master, III. vii. ‘I see he calls you Eleanor,’ he observed tonelessly.
