tongue

Etymology

From Middle English tonge, tunge, tung, from Old English tunge, from Proto-West Germanic *tungā, from Proto-Germanic *tungǭ (“tongue”) (compare West Frisian tonge, Dutch tong, Luxembourgish Zong, Zazaki Zon, German Zunge, Yiddish צונג (tsung), Danish tunge, Norwegian Bokmål tunge, Swedish tunga, Gothic 𐍄𐌿𐌲𐌲𐍉 (tuggō)), from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s. Cognate with Old Irish tengae, Latin lingua, Tocharian A käntu, Tocharian B kantwo, Lithuanian liežùvis, Russian язык (jazyk), Polish język, Old Armenian լեզու (lezu), Avestan 𐬵𐬌𐬰𐬎𐬎𐬁 (hizuuā), Ashkun žū, Kamkata-viri dić, Sanskrit जिह्वा (jihvā́). Doublet of language and lingua.

noun

1. 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.
   But lering and lurking here and there like ſpies, c. 1515–1516, published 1568, John Skelton, Againſt venemous tongues enpoyſoned with ſclaunder and falſe detractions &c.
2. (countable, uncountable) This organ, as taken from animals used for food (especially cows).
   cold tongue with mustard
   However you eat them, tongue and chicken and new bread are very good things, and no one minds being sprinkled a little with soda-water on a really fine hot day. 1902, E. Nesbit, chapter 4, in Five Children and It, New York: Dodd, Mead, published 1905, page 136
3. 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.
4. (metonymically) A language.
   (colloquial)
   He was speaking in his native tongue.
   If you do not speak English I am at your disposal with 187 other languages along with their various dialects and sub-tongues. 1956, Cyril Hume, Forbidden Planet, spoken by Robby the Robot
   Many of them come from distant places and although they speak your tongue they are ignorant of your customs. 1958, Chinua Achebe, chapter 23, in Things Fall Apart, New York: Knopf, published 1992, page 166
   My grandfather, accustomed to the multifarious conjugations of ancient Greek verbs, had found English, for all its incoherence, a relatively simple tongue to master. 2002, Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex, New York: Picador, Book 2, p. 99
5. (obsolete) Speakers of a language, collectively.
6. (obsolete) Voice (the distinctive sound of a person's speech); accent (distinctive manner of pronouncing a language).
7. Manner of speaking, often habitually.
   Al maters wel pondred and wel to be regarded, How ſhuld a fals lying tung then be rewarded? c. 1515–1516, published 1568, John Skelton, Againſt venemous tongues enpoyſoned with ſclaunder and falſe detractions &c.
   … his wicked way of Living, his prophane Tongue, and his Contempt of Religion, had made him not very well receiv’d … 1715, Daniel Defoe, The Family Instructor, London: Eman. Matthews, Volume 1, Part 2, Dialogue 2, p. 211
   I’m afraid I’ve inherited my uncle’s tongue and my mother’s want of tact. 1935, Dorothy L. Sayers, chapter 8, in Gaudy Night, London: New English Library, published 1970, page 205
   Samuel had no equal for soothing hysteria and bringing quiet to a frightened child. It was the sweetness of his tongue and the tenderness of his soul. 1952, John Steinbeck, East of Eden, London: Heinemann, Part 1, Chapter 2, p. 8
   … Frank Marcus’ Sister George, technically a quite ordinary comedy in the old style … was remarkable … for the frank tongue of its Lesbians … 1972, Hortense Calisher, Herself, New York: Arbor House, Part 4, p. 369
8. (metonymically) A person speaking in a specified manner (most often plural).
   I know that we must keep apart for a long while; cruel tongues would force us apart, if nothing else did. 1860, George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Book 7, Chapter 3
   2007, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Wizard of the Crow, New York: Knopf Doubleday, Book 4, p. 592, … the drunk, who had been a permanent fixture in that bar, changed location and thereafter moved from bar to bar, saying to inquisitive tongues, Too long a stay in one seat tires the buttocks.
9. The power of articulate utterance; speech generally.
   Parrots imitating Human Tongue 1717, “The Story of Pygmalion and the Statue”, in John Dryden, transl., Ovid’s Metamorphoses in fifteen books, London: Jacob Tonson, page 344
10. (obsolete) Discourse; fluency of speech or expression.
11. (obsolete, uncountable) Discourse; fluency of speech or expression.
12. (obsolete) Honourable discourse; eulogy.
13. (religion, often in the plural) Glossolalia.
14. In a shoe, the flap of material that goes between the laces and the foot (so called because it resembles a tongue in the mouth).
    I caught a glimpse of a brown boot, the tongue flapping, the sole tied on with string. 1990, J. M. Coetzee, chapter 3, in Age of Iron, New York: Random House, page 96
    … her low-heeled shoes had flat fringed tongues to them—the kind of shoes you expected to see on a golf-course, or a Scottish highland, somewhere expensively hearty like that. 2006, Sarah Waters, chapter 2, in The Night Watch, London: Virago, page 53
15. Any large or long physical protrusion on an automotive or machine part or any other part that fits into a long groove on another part.
16. A projection, or slender appendage or fixture.
    the tongue of a buckle, or of a balance
17. A long, narrow strip of land, projecting from the mainland into a sea or lake.
    On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water. 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 12
18. The pole of a vehicle; especially, the pole of an ox cart, to the end of which the oxen are yoked.
    Far to the right, where the main pile sloped out, his cart reared tongue upward, like a plow. 1986, Hortense Calisher, The Bobby-Soxer, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, page 91
19. The clapper of a bell.
    … the bell clanged so loud that he could hear the iron tongue clapping against the metal sides each time it swung to and fro … 1940, Richard Wright, Native Son, London: Jonathan Cape, Book 2, p. 156
20. (figurative) An individual point of flame from a fire.
    Then up a steep and dark and narrow stair We wound, until the torches’ fiery tongue Amid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung. 1818, Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Revolt of Islam, London: C. and J. Ollier, Canto 3, stanza 13, p. 63
    Now, in this decadent age the art of fire-making had been altogether forgotten on the earth. The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to Weena. 1895, H. G. Wells, chapter XI, in The Time Machine
21. A small sole (type of fish).
22. (nautical) A short piece of rope spliced into the upper part of standing backstays, etc.; also, the upper main piece of a mast composed of several pieces.
23. (music) A reed.
24. (geology) A division of formation; A layer or member of a formation that pinches out in one direction.

verb

1. (music, transitive, intransitive) 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.
2. (slang) To manipulate with the tongue, as in kissing or oral sex.
3. To protrude in relatively long, narrow sections.
   a soil horizon that tongues into clay
4. To join by means of a tongue and groove.
   to tongue boards together
5. (intransitive, obsolete) To talk; to prate.
6. (transitive, obsolete) To speak; to utter.
7. (transitive, obsolete) To chide; to scold.