tune
/tjuːn
/noun
1A melody, especially one which characterizes a certain piece of music: she left the theatre humming a cheerful tune...
- Jayachandran dismisses the allegation that some of the music composers lift the tune from old songs.
- For the fanfares and songs, the music director used tunes from Byrd's Battle and other programmatic courtly pieces.
- The music was some catchy tunes by Richard Rodgers that my friend and I were humming incessantly!
Synonyms
melody, air, strain;
song, number, jingle, ditty;
theme, motif
1.1 informal A piece of popular music: DJ Samantha provided the tunes their 1995 hit has been resurrected into a modern-day classic dance tune...
- The smooth, hour-long journey along the highway with tunes blaring was exhilarating but strangely relaxing.
- The dance floor spins pop tunes for the masses.
- While hanging in the barn, don't forget to spin some country tunes.
verb [with object]
1Adjust (a musical instrument) to the correct or uniform pitch: he tuned the harp for me [no object]: we could hear the band tuning up...
- It will take money to tune the pianos, but that is far less than what it would cost to purchase a new piano.
- Now this isn't the only way to tune musical instruments.
- Advertisements for a piano tuning school pictured a woman tuning an upright piano.
Synonyms
adjust (to the correct pitch), tune up
2Adjust (a receiver circuit such as a radio or television) to the frequency of the required signal: the radio was tuned to the BBC...
- Some radio telescopes can be tuned to this frequency, but some simply can't.
- This Radio is tuned to ‘inspirational’ easy listening and that's all we get.
- One radio was tuned to the tanker-control frequency and the other radio directly to the tanker.
2.1 [no object] (tune in) Watch or listen to a television or radio broadcast: tune in next week and find out!...
- Louise ruefully confessed she rarely tunes in to watch television these days.
- Listeners can also tune in to BBC Radio Cambridgeshire who will broadcast from many of the buildings on the day.
- Millions of fans will be tuning in to watch the match on television.
2.2 (tune something out) Exclude a sound or transmission of a particular frequency: certain tones would be muted or tuned out entirely...
- There's such an overload of environmental messages that people are tuning it out.
- Brooke tuned their conversation out, her thoughts focusing on Duncan.
- Brooke tuned the voice out at that point.
3Adjust (an engine) or balance (mechanical parts) so that a vehicle runs smoothly and efficiently: the suspension was tuned for a softer ride...
- What a difference in performance when your body, like your vehicle, is finely tuned and ‘adjusted’.
- If you show me a dad who thinks he's a great car mechanic, I will show you a badly tuned engine.
- Before tuning the engine, you must use a fuel injector additive to improve injection.
4Adjust or adapt (something) to a particular purpose or situation: the animals are finely tuned to life in the desert...
- Bone is a structure finely tuned to its mechanical environment.
- Our own internal pacemaker tunes our mental and physical energy levels more or less to the cycles of sunlight.
Synonyms
attune, adapt, adjust, fine-tune;
regulate, modulate, calibrate
5 [with two objects] South African informal Tell (something) to (someone): he starts tuning you stories about his youth
Transferred use of tune 'adjust, put right'
Phrases
call the tune
change one's tune
in (or out of) tune
there's many a good tune played on an old fiddle
to the tune of
Phrasal verbs
be tuned in
tune into
tune out
Derivatives
tunable
- Most scientists strongly distrust large-scale numerical models which rely heavily on tuneable parameters and other artificial constraints to keep them from going haywire.
- In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a number of expensive tunable radios begin to pop up in specialty electronics catalogs.
- Each of the ground harps has 22 tunable pairs of strings organised in a pentatonic scale, rather like the tuning of a lute.
Origin
Late Middle English: unexplained alteration of tone. The verb is first recorded (late 15th century) in the sense 'celebrate in music, sing'.