as in mute
unable to speak because you are nervous or shy
She became tongue-tied whenever he was around. He gets tongue-tied in front of crowds.
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for tongue-tied
Adjective
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Please check back again soon for the recorded video. LIVE VIDEO TO BEGIN AFTER AD Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% Use up and down arrows to change volume, and spacebar or enter to toggle mute.—
Louryn Strampe,
Wired News,
13 June 2025 -
The hallway is a nearly solid mass of tourists who trudge forward grim and mute as prisoners chained together at the ankles, condemned to the gallows.—
Caity Weaver,
The Atlantic,
5 June 2025
Adjective
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In helicopter video taken by Air Maui Helicopter Tours in Lahaina and posted online the people aboard are largely speechless.—
Phil Helsel,
NBC News,
10 Aug. 2023
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Because his work, as is often the case, leaves us almost speechless.—
Arkansas Online,
Arkansas Online,
10 Jan. 2023
Adjective
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What was over the hill was unknown and what went on behind a nation's borders was incomprehensible.—
David Szondy
May 31,
New Atlas,
31 May 2025
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How he was even charged as a result of this situation is incomprehensible.—
Taijuan Moorman,
USA Today,
22 May 2025
Adjective
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The Bidens may have planned the cancer announcement as a smokescreen to take the focus off the coverup of his mental decline illustrated by memory lapses, stumbles and inarticulate speech patterns heard on the audio.—
Sun Sentinel Editorial Board,
Sun Sentinel,
24 May 2025
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During arguments on Wednesday, Megan Savard — attorney for Carter Hart — said that Howden was an unsophisticated, inarticulate witness who didn’t even dress properly for court.—
Dan Robson,
New York Times,
22 May 2025
Adjective
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Without a vigorous system of checks and balances, one man’s crank ideas—like starting an incoherent trade war that upends the global economy—don’t get filtered out.—
Ava Kofman,
New Yorker,
2 June 2025
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The result is an entirely incoherent crime thriller that features gangsters prattling on about the self and the ego and the soul and then occasionally wandering into an entirely different scene where other gangsters are prattling on about the same thing.—
Will Leitch,
Vulture,
27 May 2025
Adjective
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The Bombers’ offense was silent without its Captain as Aaron Judge received his first off night of the season before the Yanks head to Fenway Park on Friday for a three-game set with the Red Sox.—
James O'Connell,
New York Daily News,
13 June 2025
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But, in many ways, Chryseis—in spite of the apparent privileging of her name and her identity as a priest’s daughter that makes its way into the later stories about her—is the more silent, the more difficult to bring back to life, of the two.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
13 June 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Tongue-tied.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/tongue-tied. Accessed 19 Jun. 2025.
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