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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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of tongue
Moments later, however, the footage cuts to a much happier scene—Burrow sitting in the grooming chair, tongue out and tail wagging, delighted to see his owner nearby.
—
Lydia Patrick, MSNBC Newsweek, 30 Oct. 2025
Your tongue and esophagus and stomach lining will thank you for it.
—Jonah Flicker, Robb Report, 30 Oct. 2025
For an artist so young, Ian appears surprisingly averse to risk-taking, draping himself instead in the armor of a hip-hop swagger that so clearly isn’t his native tongue.
—Jeff Ihaza, Rolling Stone, 30 Oct. 2025
There is a lenticular patch on the tongue that has an eye that closes and opens and with the MB Swoosh Logo; and our print, Run like no one is watching, appears on the shoe laces.
—Laird Borrelli-Persson, Vogue, 29 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for tongue
Lydia Patrick, MSNBC Newsweek, 30 Oct. 2025
Your tongue and esophagus and stomach lining will thank you for it.
—Jonah Flicker, Robb Report, 30 Oct. 2025
For an artist so young, Ian appears surprisingly averse to risk-taking, draping himself instead in the armor of a hip-hop swagger that so clearly isn’t his native tongue.
—Jeff Ihaza, Rolling Stone, 30 Oct. 2025
There is a lenticular patch on the tongue that has an eye that closes and opens and with the MB Swoosh Logo; and our print, Run like no one is watching, appears on the shoe laces.
—Laird Borrelli-Persson, Vogue, 29 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for tongue
Recent Examples of Synonyms for tongue
Noun
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In a similar vein, Timnit Gebru, a computer scientist writing during her time working at Google, warned of the dangers of large language models acting as stochastic parrots, which repeat language patterns without understanding, and in doing so replicate the biases embedded in their training data.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
5 Nov. 2025
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The dust-up stems back to the Spanish singer’s recent appearance on the New York Times’ Popcast, where she was asked about singing in about 13 different languages one her new album Lux and the challenges of communicating with a global audience.—
Jon Blistein,
Rolling Stone,
5 Nov. 2025
Noun
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Linguists have argued that its limitless potential is what gives human languages their ability to generate an infinite number of possible sentences out of a finite vocabulary and a finite set of rules.—
Steve Nadis,
Quanta Magazine,
31 Oct. 2025
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Nana was proud of how, in eight months, the boy had gone from not speaking to having a vocabulary closer to developmental guidelines.—
Jayme Fraser,
USA Today,
30 Oct. 2025
Noun
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But Simeon Silverio, former publisher of the San Diego Asian Journal, said Bayani reflects only one of many Filipino dialects and would fail to represent the country’s diverse cultural groups, each of which has its own word for hero.—
Walker Armstrong,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
22 Oct. 2025
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Even something as simple as the Chicago dialect and John Gacy’s individual odd, idiosyncratic way of speaking.—
Seth Abramovitch,
HollywoodReporter,
21 Oct. 2025
Noun
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Though the idiom of abuse has changed, the critics are as hostile as ever, while their targets react only with curious torpor.—
David Wingrave,
Harpers Magazine,
24 Oct. 2025
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Music unites the interconnecting stories in this saga and expands its passions, with a sumptuous score by composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens that taps into a wide range of American styles, idioms and amalgams, even as the second act turns more dissonant.—
Frank Rizzo,
Variety,
17 Oct. 2025
Video
An Abbreviated History of American English Spelling
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Cite this Entry
“Tongue.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/tongue. Accessed 8 Nov. 2025.
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