B2[U]a quality in the voice that expresses the speaker's feelings or thoughts, often towards the person being spoken to: I tried to use a sympathetic tone of voice.Don't speak to me in that tone of voice(= angrily), young lady!It wasn't so much what she said that annoyed me - it was her tone.Ways of speakingtones[plural]literary›the quality of someone's voice: She recounted the story to me in shocked tones (= in a shocked voice).For more than half a century, the reassuring tones of BBC newscasters have informed British television viewers about world events.Describing qualities of the human voice›[U]phoneticsa change in how high or low the voice is that can change the meaning of a word or sentence