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I'm reading a book(The Last Magician) and stumbled across this phrase. Googled and still didn't know what it meant. Any guesses?

Sentence: "He could sense the strength and tenor of a person's affinity from ten paces."

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    Which part of the sentence did you not understand?
    – Kris
    Commented Sep 4, 2017 at 10:51

1 Answer 1

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Tenor has many meanings. For your case, it's not related to music.

Tenor
noun

  1. The general meaning, sense, or content of something.
    ‘the general tenor of the debate’

Applying it to the sentence you're asking about:

He could sense the strength and content/gist of a person's affinity from ten paces.

Although "gist" is not mentioned in the dictionary, I think it fits well in the current case.

The author is trying to communicate that "He" is capable of understanding the ins and outs of another person's affinity, which means that "He" is capable of accurately defining and summarizing that person's affinity.

For reference:

Gist
noun

  1. The substance or general meaning of a speech or text.
    ‘it was hard to get the gist of Pedro's talk’

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