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

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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 As the bullying escalates and tensions boil over, tongues loosen, forcing the truth out into the open. — Christian Zilko, IndieWire, 18 Aug. 2026 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 Linguists say these various tongues have more distinction between them than the romance languages do from one another. — Popular Science Team, Popular Science, 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
Recent Examples of Synonyms for tongues
  1. languages
  2. vocabularies
  3. dialects
  4. idioms
Noun
  • Food, France, Family and the Stew that Saved my Soul, Sylvie Bigar explores the world in search of unsung culinary delights and vibrant destinations, armed with three passports and four languages.
    — Sylvie Bigar, Forbes.com, 18 Aug. 2026
  • As for the universality of her hypnotic, soulful sound and her dynamic, jazzy mezzo-soprano voice, Kidjo’s singing in five languages (Fon, French, Yorùbá, Gen-Mina and English) has forever been key to the funk, its frankness and her grace.
    — A.D. Amorosi, Variety, 18 Aug. 2026
Definition of languages
Noun
  • Yet a 2023 Stanford study said that Pangram was biased against non-native English speakers, who might have more limited vocabularies, and many AI researchers contend that such detectors are unreliable.
    — Cameron Pugh, Christian Science Monitor, 12 Aug. 2026
  • 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
Definition of vocabularies
Noun
  • And while Hasidic dialects are by far the most spoken among modern Yiddish speakers, opportunities to learn the Hasidic dialect from native speakers like Malowicki are relatively rare.
    — ABC News, ABC News, 13 Aug. 2026
  • Google says training across languages, dialects, and different proficiency levels helped the model learn structures shared between sign languages.
    — Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 12 Aug. 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 20 Aug. 2026.

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Nglish: Translation of tongues for Spanish Speakers

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