TCTBritish EnglishBrE the sound you hear when you pick up the telephone that lets you know that you can make a call 〔电话的〕拨号音SYN American English dial tone
Examples from the Corpus
dialling tone• Consider: the electricity has been cut off, the gassupply has stopped, the telephone has no dialling tone.• She jiggled the receiver and realised that there was no dialling tone.• He dialled the number again but this time there was no dialling tone - only silencestretching through the air-waves.• He grinned when he picked up the phone to check the dialling tone.• Lifted the receiver, listened to the dialling tone, put it down again.