"patronizing tone" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to refer to a tone or manner of speaking that implies superiority or condescension. For example, "The teacher spoke to her students in a patronizing tone that made them feel small and insignificant."
I was dismayed by the patronizing tone of Morris's essay.
Writing with the patronizing tone of a high-school disciplinarian, he listed several occupations that are better paid than controllers.
At least one Iraqi Council member challenged what he described as Mr. Bremer's patronizing tone, an official present at the meeting said.
Vice President Joe Biden's recent patronizing tone — "Continue down your current course and there will be pressure and isolation" — was dead wrong.
"Do you think if you'd stayed in Brooklyn," the bearded man asked, "you'd have been a better writer?" Carmody smiled at the implied insult, the patronizing tone.
In "Black Boys and Native Sons," an essay published in Dissent, Irving Howe adopted a strangely patronizing tone to celebrate Richard Wright's authenticity and to reprimand James Baldwin and Ellison for failing to possess a similar sense of rage.
Others, some given to patronizing tones, called it good for the city in a time of crisis.
Shoba Narayan deplores the macho, patronizing, celebrity-creating tone of so many cooking shows on the Food Network ["Where the Kitchen Is Mostly a Men's Club," May 27] and wishes for some genuine female cooks teaching authentic, sensuous techniques.
"A lot of people that look at you from the outside feel as if, 'Oh my gosh, how do you do it?' " he said in the most mock-patronizing tone he could summon.
The "Reparation Hardware" video uses Restoration Hardware's audiovisual lexicon of solemn aerial drone footage and a light, bland score to set off the source material's tone of patronizing sincerity before gradually, and happily, going off key.
Yeah, cleanup in Aisle 7. I was very put off by the writing and tone, which when not utterly patronizing or aggressively disingenuous were bafflingly tone-deaf.
