▪ I. half-tone, n.
1. Mus. = semitone.
| 1651 [see tone n. 4]. 1880 A. J. Hipkins in Grove Dict. Mus. 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.
| 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. Vogel's Chem. Light xv. 251 The pictures were especially wanting in half-tones. 1894 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 Karch & Buber Offset Processes 541 Halftone screen, the ruled, plate glass dot-forming device used to translate continuous tones into halftones. |
▪ II. † half-tone, v. Obs. rare—0.
(?) To sing or play in semitones.
| 1483 Cath. Angl. 171/1 To Halfe tone, semitonare. |