The difficulty of linguistically describing musical auditory impressions is well known. Based on this observation, the author examines, using an extensive corpus of French and Latin technical texts, both conceptual and linguistic strategies to address this challenge. The initial goal of the analysis of the tone property designations found in the corpus is to uncover the semantic transfer processes underlying the use of certain adjectives to describe musical tones. The diachronic perspective of the work also allows for the representation of the development of subfields of terminology as well as significant changes in the designation of acoustic core areas.