Midtone

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A level of sound or color that exists between highlights and shadows, serving as a median point in tonal ranges
2. A midpoint in a range of tones, representing values that are neither light nor dark in art or music
3. An intermediate tone that balances extremes, often found in visual and auditory compositions as a transitional shade or pitch

Etymology: "Midtone" is about as transparent as English compounds get: "mid-" meaning "middle," joined to "tone." In painting and photography it names the range of values sitting between the deepest shadows and the brightest highlights, the greys that are neither light nor dark. In music the same logic applies to pitch and color, where "tone" carries its older sense of a quality or shade rather than a single sound. The interest lies in how the two parts combine. "Tone" in its art sense comes from a Greek root meaning stretching or tension, so a tone was originally a degree of stretch, and the mid-tone is simply the midpoint on that scale of tension between light and dark. Adding "mid-" to a term already used for graded shades turns a general quality into a precise technical position on a scale.

Synonyms: middle tone, intermediate pitch, medium tone

Antonyms: high tone, low tone, extreme tone