Link Centre Dictionary

tongue

ton·gue

UK/tʊŋɡ/ US/tʌŋ/ common slang
noun (8) verb (2)

noun

1.
2.

a human written or spoken language used by a community; opposed to e.g. a computer language

Synonyms
Antonyms
3.

any long thin projection that is transient

  • “tongues of flame licked at the walls”
  • “rifles exploded quick knives of fire into the dark”
Synonyms
4.

a manner of speaking

  • “he spoke with a thick tongue”
  • “she has a glib tongue”
5.

a narrow strip of land that juts out into the sea

Synonyms
6.

the tongue of certain animals used as meat

7.

the flap of material under the laces of a shoe or boot

8.

metal striker that hangs inside a bell and makes a sound by hitting the side

Synonyms

verb

1.

articulate by tonguing, as when playing wind instruments

2.

lick or explore with the tongue

Origin

From Middle English tongue, a late spelling of tong(e), tung(e), from Old English tunge, from Proto-West Germanic *tungā (“tongue”), from Proto-Germanic *tungǭ (“tongue”), from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s (“tongue”). Doublet of langue and lingua. Cognates Germanic: West Frisian tonge, Dutch tong, Luxembourgish Zong, German Zunge, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk tunge, Faroese, Icelandic, and Swedish tunga, Gothic 𐍄𐌿𐌲𐌲𐍉 (tuggō). Italic: Asturian and Catalan llengua, Aragonese luenga, French langue, Galician, Italian, and Latin lingua, Leonese llingua, Mirandese lhéngua, Portuguese língua, Spanish lengua. Celtic: Irish teanga. Slavic: Belarusian and Russian язык (jazyk), Bulgarian ези́к (ezík), Czech and Slovak jazyk, Macedonian јазик (jazik), Polish język, Serbo-Croatian jèzik (“tongue”), Slovene jézik, Ukrainian язи́к (jazýk). Indo-Iranic: Persian زبان (zabân), Sanskrit जि॒ह्वा (jihvā́). The expected modern spelling, both phonetically and etymologically, would be tung. Using ⟨on⟩ for ⟨un⟩ was fairly common in Middle English; compare e.g. yong (“young”). The final ⟨gue⟩ arose to prevent tonge being misread with a soft /dʒ/. However, this spelling only beca...

Phrases

  • adder's tongue Terms derived from the noun or verb tongue
  • advanced tongue root Terms derived from the noun or verb tongue
  • beef tongue Terms derived from the noun or verb tongue
  • birth tongue Terms derived from the noun or verb tongue
  • bite one's tongue Terms derived from the noun or verb tongue
  • black hairy tongue syndrome Terms derived from the noun or verb tongue
  • blue-tongue lizard Terms derived from the noun or verb tongue
  • blue-tongued skink Terms derived from the noun or verb tongue

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

Narrower terms

Parts

Part of

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.