MONOTONY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does monotony mean? 

• MONOTONY (noun)
  The noun MONOTONY has 2 senses:

1. the quality of wearisome constancy, routine, and lack of variety

2. constancy of tone or pitch or inflection

  Familiarity information: MONOTONY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MONOTONY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality of wearisome constancy, routine, and lack of variety

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

humdrum; monotony; sameness

Context example:

he hated the sameness of the food the college served

Hypernyms ("monotony" is a kind of...):

unvariedness (characterized by an absence of variation)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Constancy of tone or pitch or inflection

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("monotony" is a kind of...):

constancy; stability (the quality of being enduring and free from change or variation)

 Context examples 

Merry days were these at Thornfield Hall; and busy days too: how different from the first three months of stillness, monotony, and solitude I had passed beneath its roof!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It expresses the garrulity of the sea, and is a pleasant break in the monotony of the life.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Now and then I hazarded some remark to break the monotony of the journey, but the colonel answered only in monosyllables, and the conversation soon flagged.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Here everybody was noisy, every voice was loud (excepting, perhaps, her mother's, which resembled the soft monotony of Lady Bertram's, only worn into fretfulness).

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

By Jove! here comes something at last to break our dead monotony.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In the monotony of my life, and in my constant apprehension of the re-opening of the school, it was such an insupportable affliction!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Save for the occasional use of cocaine, he had no vices, and he only turned to the drug as a protest against the monotony of existence when cases were scanty and the papers uninteresting.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

We left the table to go on deck, for a steamer was a welcome break in the monotony of the sea on which we floated, while the conviction that it was Death Larsen and the Macedonia added to the excitement.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

At first, she seemed to wonder at the gentle compassion with which the Doctor spoke to her, and at his wish that she should have her mother with her, to relieve the dull monotony of her life.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)