as in language
the stock of words, pronunciation, and grammar used by a people as their basic means of communication
he spoke in a tongue that I didn't understand
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Recent Examples of tongue
In the episode's opening scene, Alice keeled over on the organ keys, dead-eyed, with her tongue hanging out.
—
Shania Russell, Entertainment Weekly, 6 Jan. 2026
And how are the taste receptors that are all over the surface of your tongue supposed to work?
—Linda Bartoshuk, The Conversation, 5 Jan. 2026
May 21 – June 20 Your finances could be on the tip of your tongue!
—Tarot.com, New York Daily News, 3 Jan. 2026
Greg McElroy had an unfortunate slip of the tongue during his College Football Playoff broadcast Thursday night.
—Ryan Morik, FOXNews.com, 2 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for tongue
Recent Examples of Synonyms for tongue
Noun
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Nationally, median early career wages range from $40,000 for a foreign language degree to $80,000 for a computer science degree, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.—
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Administration officials have cut that time roughly in half, partly by eliminating Spanish-language courses.—
Noun
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Americans argued fiercely about whether to intervene abroad, but largely shared the same moral vocabulary.—
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Regular reading leads to positive impacts on your mental and emotional well-being, including slowing down cognitive decline, bolstering empathy and curiosity, improving your vocabulary and reducing stress.—
Noun
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Though the Norn language has gone, the local dialect remains distinctive, as fans of the BBC detective show Shetland will know.—
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Language classes, which previously covered only a specific dialect of Spanish, have been replaced with robust translation and interpretation services that apply to multiple languages.—
Noun
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There’s this Douglas Adams joke that in no language is there the idiom as pretty as an airport.—
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As a substitute, the board selected local architect William Pereira, who, never fully at ease with a modernist idiom, hewed to the middlebrow tastes and conservative politics of California’s philanthropic parvenus.—
Video
An Abbreviated History of American English Spelling
Soop, wimmen, and headake did not make the cut
Cite this Entry
“Tongue.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/tongue. Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.
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