The word timbre derives from klangfarbe meaning color of tone

Evidence

As an aside on the word timbre itself, Alexander Ellis translated the German word klangfarbe as “quality of tone,” which he argued is “familiar to our language.” He notes that he could have used one of the following three words—register, color or timbre—but he chose not to because of the following common meanings that existed for these words at the time. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 1497

Categorization

• DEFINE: Etymology of timbre as color-of-tone; clarifies exactly what the term encodes, which matters for a field where the word is notoriously undefined.
• CANDY: The etymology of ‘timbre’ as literally ‘tone-color’ from German is a fun trivia nugget.
• XREF: connects to: Color analogies naturally describe timbre, whose acoustic basis is overtones

Related

• The English word timbre derives from a contested translation of German klangfarbe. (similarity 0.95)
• Color analogies naturally describe timbre, whose acoustic basis is overtones (similarity 0.92)
• The English term timbre entered music through poor translation alternatives (similarity 0.90)
• The English word timbre was once judged a foreign, mispronounced borrowing not worth preserving. (similarity 0.88)
• Timbre distinguishes sounds sharing pitch, loudness, and duration. (similarity 0.85)
• Timbre is determined by the relative amplitudes of partials, not their frequencies alone (similarity 0.84)
• Scholes held that overtones alone condition timbre (similarity 0.81)
• Timbre is defined as the residual difference once loudness, pitch, and duration are matched (similarity 0.80)
• Timbre is defined negatively, as whatever differs between equal-pitch, equal-loudness sounds (similarity 0.79)
• Timbral words mean different things to different speakers (similarity 0.78)