“tongues” is a form of
tongue
/tʌŋ/ noun, verb, proper noun
Also a form of tung
Forms tongues tonguing tongued tong tonge toong toongue toung tounge toungue tung tunge
- noun The flexible muscular organ in the mouth that is used to move food around, for tasting and that is moved into various positions to modify the flow of air from the lungs in order to produce different sounds in speech.
- noun (countable, uncountable) Such an organ, as taken from animals and used for food (especially from cows). “cold tongue with mustard”
- noun Any similar organ, such as the lingual ribbon, or odontophore, of a mollusk; the proboscis of a moth or butterfly; or the lingua of an insect.
- noun (metonymic) A language. “He was speaking in his native tongue.”
- noun (obsolete, synecdochic) The speakers of a language, collectively.
- noun (obsolete) A voice, (the distinctive sound of a person's speech); accent (distinctive manner of pronouncing a language).
- noun A manner of speaking, often habitually. “She can have a sharp tongue when she's annoyed.”
- noun (synecdochic, usually in the plural) A person speaking in a specified manner.
- verb (music, ambitransitive) On a wind instrument, to articulate a note by starting the air with a tap of the tongue, as though by speaking a 'd' or 't' sound (alveolar plosive). “Playing wind instruments involves tonguing on the reed or mouthpiece.”
- verb (transitive) To manipulate with the tongue.
- verb (transitive, slang, sometimes vulgar) To lick, penetrate or manipulate with the tongue during flirting or oral sex.
- verb To protrude in relatively long, narrow sections. “a soil horizon that tongues into clay”
- verb To join by means of a tongue and groove. “to tongue boards together”
- verb (intransitive, obsolete) To talk; to prate.
- verb (transitive, obsolete) To speak; to utter.
- verb (transitive, obsolete) To chide; to scold.
- proper noun A village by the Kyle of Tongue in Sutherland, Highland council area, Scotland (OS grid ref NC5956).
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
glossa lingua idiom language lingo mouth speaking in tongues clapper natural language knife spit
Etymology
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.
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.
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 became common at a time when the final ⟨e⟩ was already largely silent, so it is not clear why it was not simply dropped instead. Perhaps the spelling was influenced directly by French langue (“tongue”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun an organ situated in the floor of the mouth of most vertebrates and connected with the hyoid arch.
- noun The power of articulate utterance; speech.
- verb To speak; to utter. "Such stuff as madmen tongue." Shak.
- verb To chide; to scold.
Etymology [OE. tunge, tonge, AS. tunge; akin to OFries. tunge, D. tong, OS. tunga, G. zunge, OHG. zunga, Icel. & Sw. tunga, Dan tunge, Goth. tugdingua, L. lingua. Language, Lingo.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “tongue”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details