Rhythm vs. Intonation — What's the Difference?

Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός, rhythmos, "any regular recurring motion, symmetry"—Liddell and Scott 1996) generally means a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions" (Anon. 1971, 2537).

The act of intoning or chanting.

Movement or variation characterized by the regular recurrence or alternation of different quantities or conditions

An intoned utterance.

The patterned, recurring alternations of contrasting elements of sound or speech.

A manner of producing or uttering tones, especially with regard to accuracy of pitch.

The patterning of musical sound, as by differences in the timing, duration, or stress of consecutive notes.

(Linguistics) The use of changing pitch to convey syntactic information

A specific kind of such patterning

A use of pitch characteristic of a speaker or dialect

A group of instruments supplying the rhythm in a band.

(Music) The opening phrase of a plainsong composition sung as a solo part.

The pattern or flow of sound created by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in accentual verse or of long and short syllables in quantitative verse.

(linguistics) The rise and fall of the voice in speaking.

The similar but less formal sequence of sounds in prose.

Emotive stress used to increase the power of delivery in speech.

A specific kind of metrical pattern or flow

A sound made by, or resembling that made by, a musical instrument.

The sense of temporal development created in a work of literature or a film by the arrangement of formal elements such as the length of scenes, the nature and amount of dialogue, or the repetition of motifs.

Singing or playing in good tune or otherwise.

A regular or harmonious pattern created by lines, forms, and colors in painting, sculpture, and other visual arts.

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.

The pattern of development produced in a literary or dramatic work by repetition of elements such as words, phrases, incidents, themes, images, and symbols.

A thundering; thunder.

Procedure or routine characterized by regularly recurring elements, activities, or factors

The act of sounding the tones of the musical scale.

The variation of strong and weak elements (such as duration, accent) of sounds, notably in speech or music, over time; a beat or meter.

The manner of speaking, especially the placement of emphasis, the cadence, and the rise and fall of the pitch of the voice while speaking.

A specifically defined pattern of such variation.

Rise and fall of the voice pitch

A flow, repetition or regularity.

Singing by a soloist of the opening piece of plainsong

The tempo or speed of a beat, song or repetitive event.

The act of singing in a monotonous tone

The musical instruments which provide rhythm (mainly; not or less melody) in a musical ensemble.

The production of musical tones (by voice or instrument); especially the exactitude of the pitch relations

A regular quantitative change in a variable (notably natural) process.

Controlled repetition of a phrase, incident or other element as a stylistic figure in literature and other narrative arts; the effect it creates.

A person's natural feeling for rhythm.

In the widest sense, a dividing into short portions by a regular succession of motions, impulses, sounds, accents, etc., producing an agreeable effect, as in music poetry, the dance, or the like.

Movement in musical time, with periodical recurrence of accent; the measured beat or pulse which marks the character and expression of the music; symmetry of movement and accent.

A division of lines into short portions by a regular succession of arses and theses, or percussions and remissions of voice on words or syllables.

The harmonious flow of vocal sounds.

The basic rhythmic unit in a piece of music;

Recurring at regular intervals

An interval during which a recurring sequence of events occurs;

The arrangement of spoken words alternating stressed and unstressed elements;

Natural family planning in which ovulation is assumed to occur 14 days before the onset of a period (the fertile period would be assumed to extend from day 10 through day 18 of her cycle)