half-tonen.
1. Music. = semitone n.
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society > leisure > the arts > music > musical sound > pitch > interval > [noun] > semitone
semitone1486
semitune1486
half-note1597
demitune1598
bemol1626
half-tone1651
hemitone1694
feint1730
demi-tone1828
subtone1829
1651 J. F. tr. H. C. Agrippa Three Bks. Occult Philos. ii. ix. 191 There are six Tones of all harmony, viz. 5. Tones, & 2. half tones which make one tone, which is the sixt.
1880 A. J. Hipkins in Grove Dict. Music I. 685/1 The mechanism for raising the pitch of the strings [of a harp] one half tone..or two half tones.
2. Art. A tone intermediate between the extreme lights and extreme shades; one of the lighter shadows of a photograph, engraving, picture, etc.; esp. in Printing and Photogr., a photo-mechanical illustration printed from a block in which the tones are broken up into small or large dots by the interposition of a glass screen, ruled with fine cross-lines, between the camera and the object; this process. Also attrib.
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the world > matter > colour > [noun] > half-tint or half-tone
mezzotintoa1650
semi-tint1728
mezzotint1738
middle tone1838
half-tone1867
society > leisure > the arts > visual arts > painting and drawing > light and shade > [noun] > half-tone
semitone1821
half-tone1867
1867 G. W. Simpson Photographs in Pigments 51 The imperative condition upon which half-tone depends, the exposure of one side of the film to light..seemed to present an insuperable difficulty.
1875 tr. H. W. Vogel Chem. Light xv. 251 The pictures were especially wanting in half-tones.
1894 E. L. Wilson Cycl. Photogr. 179 A picture without half tones is harsh.
1894 Times 31 Jan. 3/3 The making of the blocks for the half-tone illustrations.
1911 Encycl. Brit. XIV. 325/1 Half-tone blocks..were used in the Graphic from 1884.
1937 E. J. Labarre Dict. Paper 155/1 Halftone paper, a printing paper suitable for printing half-tone blocks.
1940 Chambers's Techn. Dict. 399/2 Half-tone process, a process of photographic reproduction in which the varying tones of the original are photographically translated into dots of uniform tone but varying size.
1958 Times Lit. Suppl. 17 Jan. 35/2 Such subjects as colour correction by masking, three-colour half-tone printing.
1959 House & Garden July 92/4 The publisher has had the sensible idea of backing his colour~plates..with half-tones in black-and-white.
1961 T. Landau Encycl. Librarianship (ed. 2) 160/2 Half-tone screens, transparent plates ruled diagonally with opaque lines at right angles to each other.
1967 R. R. Karch & E. J. Buber Graphic Arts Procedures: Offset Processes 541 Halftone screen, the ruled, plate glass dot-forming device used to translate continuous tones into halftones.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1898; most recently modified version published online June 2012).
† half-tonev.
Obs. rare—0.
(?) To sing or play in semitones.
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1483 Cath. Angl. 171/1 To Halfe tone, semitonare.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1898; most recently modified version published online September 2011).
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