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
Olympian figure skater Alysa Liu has been on the tip of everyone’s tongues, following her two gold medal wins at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
—
Katie Decker-Jacoby, StyleCaster, 30 Mar. 2026
The name just kind of rolls off the tongue when your name's already Utley.
—Ryan Canfield, FOXNews.com, 29 Mar. 2026
In another part of the factory, a worker used a wooden stick, like a tongue compressor at a doctor’s office, to scrape excess bits of explosive out of the grooves inside each shell, ensuring that the base would screw on smoothly.
—Simon Shuster, The Atlantic, 27 Mar. 2026
The sediment close to their roots can be as sweet as fruit nectars or tree sap, although to human tongues the mud tastes overwhelmingly of salt and decay.
—David George Haskell, Big Think, 27 Mar. 2026
See All Example Sentences for tongue
Katie Decker-Jacoby, StyleCaster, 30 Mar. 2026
The name just kind of rolls off the tongue when your name's already Utley.
—Ryan Canfield, FOXNews.com, 29 Mar. 2026
In another part of the factory, a worker used a wooden stick, like a tongue compressor at a doctor’s office, to scrape excess bits of explosive out of the grooves inside each shell, ensuring that the base would screw on smoothly.
—Simon Shuster, The Atlantic, 27 Mar. 2026
The sediment close to their roots can be as sweet as fruit nectars or tree sap, although to human tongues the mud tastes overwhelmingly of salt and decay.
—David George Haskell, Big Think, 27 Mar. 2026
See All Example Sentences for tongue
Recent Examples of Synonyms for tongue
Noun
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Arghavan runs a small language school that teaches French to Iranians who want to live in the Canadian province of Quebec.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
7 Apr. 2026
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That language isn’t in the new law.—
Claire Heddles,
Miami Herald,
7 Apr. 2026
Noun
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The propeller hat has become a signature look for the pig — a 4-year-old Vietnamese potbelly named Merlin — who has more than 1 million followers on Instagram, a surprisingly hefty vocabulary and a Guinness World Record.—
Camila Pedrosa,
Sacbee.com,
5 Apr. 2026
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The subject matter is deathly serious—international war, unfolding in real time, killing thousands—yet the visual vocabulary is preposterously trivializing.—
Kyle Chayka,
New Yorker,
2 Apr. 2026
Noun
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Today, many of those words fill out the default dialect of an entire generation — regardless of race, region or class — living online.—
Moriah Humiston,
NBC news,
3 Apr. 2026
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The Poison frontman, evoking the regional dialect of his native Pittsburgh, bursts with adrenaline on a typical day.—
Melissa Ruggieri,
USA Today,
2 Apr. 2026
Noun
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The centuries-old pot-kettle idiom points out hypocrisy — as when one person accuses another of a flaw that afflicts himself.—
George Skelton,
Mercury News,
26 Mar. 2026
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If the assignment is to translate something from a foreign language, there are plenty of tools and resources that can do it for you, including by recognizing and figuratively translating idioms.—
Ethan Siegel,
Big Think,
25 Mar. 2026
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 7 Apr. 2026.
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