tenor

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   (of a musical instrument) intermediate between alto and baritone or bass

   A tenor sax.

2. 2
   noun

   the general meaning or substance of an utterance

   Although I disagreed with them, I could follow the tenor of their argument.

3. 3
   noun

   a settled, prevailing, habitual course of a person's life

   Nothing disturbed the even tenor of my life.

4. 4
   adj

   of or close in range to the highest natural adult male voice

   Tenor voice.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Tenor comes ultimately from Latin tenere “to hold.” In medieval music the tenor was the part that “held” the melody; the separate sense “general course or substance,” as in the tenor of an argument, developed through Latin tenor “course, substance, or meaning of a law.”

From Middle English tenour, from Anglo-Norman tenour, from Old French tenor (“substance, contents, meaning, sense; tenor part in music”), from Latin tenor (“course, continuance; holder”), from teneō (“to hold”). In music, from the notion of the one who holds the melody, as opposed to the countertenor.

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