Definitions

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

  • noun Lack of normal muscle tone.
  • noun Lack of accent or stress.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In pathology, a want of tone; defect of muscular power; weakness of any organ, particularly of one that is contractile; debility.

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

  • noun (Med.) Want of tone; weakness of the system, or of any organ, especially of such as are contractile.

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

  • noun Lack of muscle tone; flaccidity or atonia

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

  • noun lack of normal muscular tension or tonus

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Late Latin atonia, from Greek atoniā, from atonos, slack : a-, without; see a– + tonos, stretching, tone; see tone.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From New Latin atonia, from Ancient Greek ἀτονία (atonia, "languor"), from ἄτονος (atonos, "languid"), from ἀ- (a-, "privative") + τόνος (tonos, "accent"), from τείνειν (teinein, "to stretch").

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