TENOR • DICTIONARY ONE.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

... selected a hymn, but of a peculiar metre. He read only two lines, and then looked expectantly toward Annie, who could not at the moment think of a tune that would answer; and while with knit brows she was bending over her book, to her unbounded surprise she heard the hymn started by a clear, mellow tenor voice. Looking up she saw Gregory singing as gravely as a deacon. She was sufficiently a musician to know that the air did not belong to sacred music, though she ...

— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... impulse still, Itself it bears its fires along. For, lo, That ether can flow thus steadily on, on, With one unaltered urge, the Pontus proves— That sea which floweth forth with fixed tides, Keeping one onward tenor as it glides. ...

— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... forehead lined with a thousand cares, The seaweed-character of hairs!— You shall see and you shall see, Or you may hear, as I can feel, When the winds batter, how these parchments clatter, And the beautiful tenor that's ever ringing When thro' the Seaweed the breeze is singing: And you should know, I know a great deal, When the bacchi arcanum I clutch and gripe, I know a great deal of wind and weather By hearing my own cheeks slap together A-pulling up ...

— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... his voice an aggravated tenor with a shake to it like an accordion, and he sang that stanza over and over as Lambert leaned ...

— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... the tenor of your ioyous layes, With which ye use your loves to deifie, And blazon foorth an earthlie beauties praise Above the compasse of the arched skie: 370 Now change your praises into piteous cries, And eulogies ...

— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

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