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Tone down   /toʊn daʊn/   Listen
verb
Tone  v. t.  (past & past part. toned; pres. part. toning)  
1.
To utter with an affected tone.
2.
To give tone, or a particular tone, to; to tune. See Tune, v. t.
3.
(Photog.) To bring, as a print, to a certain required shade of color, as by chemical treatment.
To tone down.
(a)
To cause to give lower tone or sound; to give a lower tone to.
(b)
(Paint.) To modify, as color, by making it less brilliant or less crude; to modify, as a composition of color, by making it more harmonius. "Its thousand hues toned down harmoniusly."
(c)
Fig.: To moderate or relax; to diminish or weaken the striking characteristics of; to soften. "The best method for the purpose in hand was to employ some one of a character and position suited to get possession of their confidence, and then use it to tone down their religious strictures."
To tone up, to cause to give a higher tone or sound; to give a higher tone to; to make more intense; to heighten; to strengthen.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tone down" Quotes from Famous Books



... Miss Baby only had known it, was a throne before which knelt her two adoring subjects. Polly had said the baby would be like Kate. Its hair and colouring were like hers, but it had the brown eyes of its father, and enough of his facial lines to tone down the too generous Bates features. When the baby was five months old it was too pretty for adequate description. One baby has no business with perfect features, a mop of curly, yellow silk hair, and big brown eyes. One of the questions Kate and Adam discussed most ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... as his chief adviser, but he surrounded himself with reforming ecclesiastics from beyond the Alps. Thus fortified he issued edicts against simoniacal and married clergy; but finding that their literal fulfilment would have emptied all existing offices, he was obliged to tone down his original threats and to allow clergy guilty of simony to atone their fault by an ample penance. But Leo's contribution to the building up of the papal power was his personal appearance, not as a suppliant but as a judge, beyond the Alps. Three times in ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... know Talboys. When I first met him, before he started building, he was a cheerful soul with a kindly word for everyone. The builder assures him that in another twenty years, when the colour has had time to tone down, his house will be a picture. At present it makes him bilious, the mere sight of it. Year by year, they tell him, as the dampness wears itself away, he will suffer less and less from rheumatism, ague, and lumbago. He has a hedge round the garden; it is eighteen inches high. To keep the boys out he ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... time. The chief obstacle to a coalition, he said, was Fox's support of French principles, which must preclude his taking the Foreign Office immediately. The remark is noteworthy as implying Pitt's expectation that either Fox might tone down his opinions, or the Revolution might abate its violence. Further, when Loughborough reminded him of the ardour of his advocacy of the Abolitionist cause, he replied that some concession must be made on that head, as the King strongly objected to the way in which ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... robes of fine woven stuff made in their primitive looms, which would seem to be incapable of turning out such textures. The addition of blocks of graphite, some curiously carved into the shape of elephants, and the more prosaic agricultural productions, such as cotton, cinnamon, matting and baskets, tone down the color and exhibit the fact that the English possession has the mercantile side. Antlers of the Ceylon deer, tusks of elephants and boars, contrast with the richness and the sobriety of the other contents of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various


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