tongues

noun

plural of tongue
as in languages
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

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of tongues The women in the WNBA should no more be required to hold their tongues than the men who play in the NBA. — Dana O’Neil, CNN Money, 12 Aug. 2026 In the margin, staghounds clean their paws with oiled tongues. — Literary Hub, 5 Aug. 2026 Children separated from their families were taught, sometimes violently, not to speak their native tongues, and many did not pass them on to their children. — Kadin Mills, NPR, 26 July 2026 But today’s linguistic diversity may be only the shadow of a time when humans conversed in 10 times as many tongues. — Cody Cottier, Scientific American, 23 July 2026 From the moment any combination of sugar, fat, dairy and/or dough first touched our tongues, we were hooked. — Isidoro Rodriguez, Forbes.com, 21 July 2026 The animals were killed for their hides and their tongues, a culinary delicacy, but also as part of the campaign to ethnically cleanse Native Americans from the land. — Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily, 20 July 2026 The Texas players kicked our bats, yelled at our girls, stuck their tongues out, threw the ball in the air after every inning and on and on. — Joe Kinsey Outkick, FOXNews.com, 20 July 2026 The measure added soluble coffee, certain palm oil derivatives and frozen cattle tongues to the product scope. — Jennifer Bringle, Footwear News, 16 July 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for tongues
  1. languages
  2. vocabularies
  3. dialects
  4. idioms
Noun
  • Sadhguru is also a bestselling author whose videos stream in 35 languages on social media.
    — Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 10 Aug. 2026
  • The Bible is widely read and loved in spite of the fact that most people don’t speak any of the languages in which it was originally written.
    — The New Yorker, New Yorker, 10 Aug. 2026
Definition of languages
Noun
  • Chinese law schools have accordingly placed greater weight on teaching Chinese students to argue using the vocabularies of foreign legal systems.
    — Mark Jia, Foreign Affairs, 7 Aug. 2026
  • These systems aim to connect common vocabularies, graphs, data catalogs and enterprise metadata into one coherent semantic layer.
    — Harini Gopalakrishnan, Forbes.com, 6 Aug. 2026
Definition of vocabularies
Noun
  • Sometimes the problem is not translation at all, but meanings that shift between two dialects of the same language.
    — Karen Stollznow, The Conversation, 23 July 2026
  • Korea and China just demonstrated, in their very different dialects, that friction can be deliberately put back.
    — Jason Snyder, Forbes.com, 17 July 2026
Definition of dialects
Noun
  • On the one hand, the translation serves as a source for the idioms of nineteenth-century English; on the other, as evidence of the ideas that the translator held about a Colombian woman writer.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 1 July 2026
  • The film’s look is inspired by ink wash paintings and wood blocks, moving fluidly between different visual idioms.
    — Jordan Hoffman, Entertainment Weekly, 1 July 2026
Definition of idioms

Browse Nearby Words

tongueless
tongues
tongue-tied
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Cite this Entry

“Tongues.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/tongues. Accessed 14 Aug. 2026.

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Nglish: Translation of tongues for Spanish Speakers

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