intonation

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act of intoning or chanting.
• noun An intoned utterance.
• noun A manner of producing or uttering tones, especially with regard to accuracy of pitch.
• noun Linguistics The use of changing pitch to convey syntactic information.
• noun A use of pitch characteristic of a speaker or dialect.
• noun Music The opening phrase of a plainsong composition sung as a solo part.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A thundering; thunder.
• noun Utterance of tones; mode of enunciation; modulation of the voice in speaking; also, expression of sentiment or emotion by variations of tone: as, his intonation was resonant or harsh.
• noun The act of intoning or speaking with the singing voice; specifically, the use of musical tones in ecclesiastical delivery: as, the intonation of the litany.
• noun In music: The process or act of producing tones in general or a particular series of tones, like a scale, especially with the voice.
• noun In plain-song, the two or more notes leading up to the dominant or reciting-tone of a chant or melody, and usually sung by but one or a few voices. The proper intonation varies with the mode used, and also with the text to be sung.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun obsolete A thundering; thunder.
• noun The act of sounding the tones of the musical scale.
• noun Singing or playing in good tune or otherwise.
• noun Reciting in a musical prolonged tone; intonating, or singing of the opening phrase of a plain-chant, psalm, or canticle by a single voice, as of a priest. See intone, v. t.
• noun The manner of speaking, especially the placement of emphasis, the cadence, and the rise and fall of the pitch of the voice while speaking.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A thundering; thunder.
• noun linguistics The rise and fall of the voice in speaking.
• noun The act of sounding the tones of the musical scale.
• noun Singing or playing in good tune or otherwise.
• noun Reciting in a musical prolonged tone; intonating or singing of the opening phrase of a plain-chant, psalm, or canticle by a single voice, as of a priest.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the act of singing in a monotonous tone
• noun the production of musical tones (by voice or instrument); especially the exactitude of the pitch relations
• noun rise and fall of the voice pitch
• noun singing by a soloist of the opening piece of plainsong