TENOR • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Tenor

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/tˈɛnər/ Listen

noun

Tenor n.

1.

A state of holding on in a continuous course; manner of continuity; constant mode; general tendency; course; career. "Along the cool sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their away."

2.

That course of thought which holds on through a discourse; the general drift or course of thought; purport; intent; meaning; understanding. "When it (the bond) is paid according to the tenor." "Does not the whole tenor of the divine law positively require humility and meekness to all men?"

3.

Stamp; character; nature. "This success would look like chance, if it were perpetual, and always of the same tenor."

4.

(Law) An exact copy of a writing, set forth in the words and figures of it. It differs from purport, which is only the substance or general import of the instrument.

5.

(Mus.)

(a)

The higher of the two kinds of voices usually belonging to adult males; hence, the part in the harmony adapted to this voice; the second of the four parts in the scale of sounds, reckoning from the base, and originally the air, to which the other parts were auxillary.

(b)

A person who sings the tenor, or the instrument that play it.

Old Tenor, New Tenor, Middle Tenor, different descriptions of paper money, issued at different periods, by the American colonial governments in the last century.

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Etymology of 'Tenor'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tenor" Quotes from Famous Books

... "The tenor of our whole lives," said an English poet, "is what we make it in the first five years after we become our masters"; and a wiser than he has said, "The thing that has been is, and God requireth the past." Columbus ...

— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... behaviour was a little formal. Women and girls were elegantly accomplished, in place of being solidly informed or scientifically crammed, in accordance with the fashion of the nineteenth century. Above all, they declined with a gentle unconquerable doggedness to be turned from the even tenor of their ways. Italian was still largely taught in the school, while only a fraction of the pupils learnt German. Latin had no standing ground save in the derivation of words, Greek was unknown. The word mathematics was not mentioned. The voice ...

— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... Baillie published a collection of Poetic Miscellanies, in 1836 three more volumes of Plays, in 1842 Fugitive Verses, and she was the author also of A View of the General Tenor of the New Testament Regarding the Nature and ...

— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... known for her smile, which had become public property on picture post-cards and the Obosh bottles. She was dressed as a work-girl also, but in striped silk with a real lace apron and a few diamonds. Then the hero arrived. He wore a red shirt, brown boots, and had a tenor voice. He explained an interesting little bit of the plot, which included an eccentric will and other novelties. The humorous dandy of the play was greeted with shouts of joy by the chorus and equal enthusiasm by the audience. He agreed ...

— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... the station. Three or four swagger young drummers had scrambled off the smoker, and these ambassadors of fashion as many hotel bus drivers were inviting with importunate hospitality to honour their respective board and bed. There was the shirt-sleeved figure of Jim Ludlow, ticket agent and tenor of the Presbyterian choir. And leaning cross-legged beneath the station eaves, giving the effect of supporting the low roof, were half a dozen slowly masticating, soberly contemplative gentlemen—loose-jointed ...

— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

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