Do we say overtones or undertones

overtones 11 occurrences

The other events of the funeral flowed by in a sort of dream: he moved about; the negroes were speaking to him in the queer overtones one uses to the bereaved; he was being driven back to Niggertown; he reentered the Siner cabin.

Peter still tried to be casual, but his voice held new overtones.

" Overtones of shock, even of horror, in the two voices brought Peter wide awake the moment he opened his eyes.

His daughter and his wife have only to die when they please; provided the bells of the parish which toll for them continue to sound the 12th and the 17th overtones, all will be well.

But farther on comes a dull, low murmuring, scarcely to be heard at first, so nicely does it fit this gentle monotone of silence, yet soon filling the trembling air with overtones that rise and fall and swell again in varying chords.

The great defect of that instrument was the rendering of the overtones in music and the hissing consonants in speech.

Overtones, all of thembut what a range!

When one of Goethe's characters says: "My life began at the moment I fell in love with you;" or when one of Lessing's characters exclaims: "To live apart from her is inconceivable to me, would be my death"we still hear the note of selfishness, but with harmonic overtones that change its quality, the result of a change in the way of regarding women.

"Mir ... i ... am," he repeated, looking in the center of the eyes without flinching, and becoming instantly aware that his utterance of the name produced in himself a development and extension of the original overtones awakened by her speaking of his own name.

There seemed a curious mingling in the resonant cavity of his great mouth of the fundamental note and the overtones.

"We shall yet call upon the Names, and see," replied Skale, placing a great hand upon his companion's shoulder, "not aloud necessarily, but by an inner effort of intense will which sets in vibration the finer harmonics heard only by the poet and magician, those harmonics and overtones which embody the psychical element in music.

undertones 51 occurrences

" Upon the tower there met them the Reeve, anxious of brow, who pointed where the townsfolk talked together in fearful undertones or clustered, mute and trembling, while every eye was turned where, in the open, 'twixt town and camp, a procession of black-robed priests advanced, chanting very solemn and sweet.

They were talking in cautious undertones, and in French.

And these things are not to be done effectively and bindingly nowadays by official gentlemen in discreet undertones.

Presently a shabby, furtive little rat of a man nudged his elbow, and Dupont followed him to a corner, where they confabulated in undertones for many minutes; while Lanyard loitered just outside their normal range of vision.

Then, a few paces away, the bridal pair, Denis and Marthe, were conversing in undertones; while the bride's mother, Madame Desvignes, sat listening to them with a discreet and infinitely gentle smile upon her lips.

And towards midnight, while they were chatting together in undertones, they were suddenly stupefied at hearing Seraphine raise her voice, after preserving silence for three hours.

But under the shadow of the Broglio and those great columns of the Ducal Palace there are only slow-moving figures here and there, wrapped in cloaks, and dark under the low, unlighted arches, talking in undertones which even the watchful Lionso near, so cunningdoes not always overhear.

Drinks were in order when this last appeared; and a brief conference in undertones ended when, having made careful reconnaissance, the publican nodded shortly to the patron, a jerk of his thumb designating a small door let into the wall to one side of the bar proper.

The table was large and round, the sixty or seventy other diners in the room made a certain amount of noise, so that it was easy to talk in undertones while the conversation of the others was general.

That sometimes in hoarse, rushing undertones, Sometimes in thunderous peals of billowy shouts, Called after her to come, and make no stay.

He talked to Peter in undertones about the finishing of the casket, how much the Knights of Tabor would pay, what Peter wanted.

"Undertones," published in 1863, and "Idylls and Legends of Inverburn," which appeared two years later, made him famous.

Even the brown thrasher, whose ordinary performance, is so full-voiced, not to say boisterous, will sometimes soliloquize, or seem to soliloquize, in the faintest of undertones.

The moment she had left the carriage, men and women and children had seized eagerly upon her belongings, to carry the bags and rugs and little packages, and now they followed her in a compact crowd, all talking together in harsh undertones; and from the dark doorways, as she went by, old women and old men came out, and more children, half clothed in rags, and cripples four or five.

Ken and Felicia talked till late into the night, in earnest undertones, of ways and means and the needs of the old house.

The coffee-room murmured with many undertones.

She describes those obscure moral tendencies, nascent forces, and undertones of feeling and thought, which enter so much into life.

Undertones of war.

Undertones of war.

" Steadily he spoke, and steadily the humming drone that filled the cabin kept its undertones that lulled, that soothed.

BUCHANAN, ROBERT, a writer in prose and verse, born in Warwickshire, educated at Glasgow University; his first work, "Undertones," a volume of verse published by him in 1863, and he has since written a goodly number of poems, some of them of very high merit, the last "The Wandering Jew," which attacks the Christian religion; besides novels, has written magazine articles, and one in particular, which involved him in some trouble; b.1841.

And the undertones of their being were sounding in unison with the gentle music of the hour.

" The eager French voice of Lauzun went on, in undertones certainly, but as if he had not the faculty of silence, and amid the plash of the oars, the rush of the river, and the roar of the rain, it was not easy to tell what he said, his voice was only another of the noises, though the Queen made little courteous murmurs in reply.

And they spoke to each other in undertones, breaking the silence with brief sentences, as persons speak when awaiting news from sick-rooms.

The two in the tonneau muttered something in undertones while the little woman smiled at them contemptuously.

Do we say   overtones   or  undertones