one-note
English
Etymology
An allusion to the monotony of a single musical note played or sung repeatedly.
Pronunciation
Audio (Australia): (file)
Adjective
- (idiomatic) Having only one opinion, outlook, tone, etc., especially as expressed repetitively; without variety or range.
- Synonyms: invariant, monotonal, monotonous
- 1971 March 13, Michael Sragow, “Theatre: Look Back in Anger Tonight at the Loeb Ex”, in Harvard Crimson[1], retrieved 25 July 2009:
- But Pope Brock plays him in such a one-note key of gulping and spitting and snickering cynicism that the spectacle becomes numbing.
- 1992, Jane Creighton, “Bierce, Fuentes, and the Critique of Reading”, in South Central Review, volume 9, number 2, page 66:
- The footnotes that attend Ambrose Bierce in the U.S. literary canon roughly place him as a minor writer of grotesque supernatural tales and trenchant war stories, a misanthrope, curmudgeon, a purveyor of stringing sarcasms, a one-note wit.
- 2005, Anahid Kassabian, “Academic Frostbite (A Cautionary Tale)”, in Women's Studies Quarterly, volume 33, number 3/4, page 403:
- To his mind, there was only one right and true position on the question. This sort of one-note response is precisely the problem facing politically engaged academics in the U.S. at the moment.
- 2011 June 3, Benjamin Mercer, “On ‘Drive Angry,’ the Schlocky Role Nicolas Cage Was Born to Play”, in James Bennet, editor, The Atlantic[3], Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 19 February 2025:
- Moreover, Drive Angry offers evidence that Cage hasn't recently been one-note in his performances so much as in his choice of schlocky material.
- 2026 September 15, Stuart Heritage, “No Big Deal review – is this how AI ends humanity … with a sitcom so bad it bores you to death?”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian[4], London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 19 October 2026:
- This is not a funny show. It’s one-note and bawdy, and none of the jokes land. It seems as though, by rushing straight to AI, Dickinson has bypassed the development process that actually makes something good.