overtone

noun

over·tone ˈō-vər-ˌtōn

: one of the higher tones produced simultaneously with the fundamental and that with the fundamental comprise a complex musical tone : harmonic sense 1a

: harmonic sense 2

: the color of the light reflected (as by a paint)

: a secondary effect, quality, or meaning : suggestion, connotation

Examples of overtone in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Religious overtones were heavy at the outset of Rep. Mike Johnson’s election. —

Siobhan Hughes, WSJ, 25 Oct. 2023 This one will actually have a little bit more of an evil overtone to it, so this is going to be hopefully the scariest and the darkest. —

William Earl, Variety, 12 June 2023 Combining overtones in the right way can produce short light pulses only a few hundred attoseconds long. —

Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Oct. 2023 The movie wastes time on setting up a few minor points of the followers’ personalities (the nurse wants a man in her life, the students are in a romantic relationship, the clerk is tired of his fussy boss) rather than probing the psychology of a mass movement with strong political overtones. —

Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 12 Sep. 2023 The films were released without the NC-17, which from the moment it was created, in 1990, gave any movie it was assigned to the same overtone of scandal that the old X rating did. —

Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 13 Aug. 2023 But Medvedev disrupted that dream final by beating Alcaraz in four sets on Friday night, setting up a different rematch that also had historic overtones. —

Dan Wolken, USA TODAY, 10 Sep. 2023 After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2004, Hughes spent the next 10 years painting domestic interiors with heavy symbolic overtones, but no people, except for a brief stint at the very end of her interiors period. —

Dodie Kazanjian, Vogue, 1 Sep. 2023 But a sharp political punch came in the implication of official sanction for the the work’s homoerotic overtones. —

Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 29 Aug. 2023 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'overtone.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.