tongue

Reading level: medium

Estimated CEFR level: A2 — Elementary

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

  1. noun a mobile mass of muscular tissue covered with mucous membrane and located in the oral cavity
  2. noun a human written or spoken language used by a community; opposed to e.g. a computer language
  3. noun any long thin projection that is transient

Etymology

From Middle English tongue, a late spelling of tong(e), tung(e), from Old English tunge, from Proto-West Germanic *tungā (“tongue”), from Proto-Germanic *tungǭ (“tongue”), from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s (“tongue”). Cognate with Dutch tong (“tongue”), German Zunge (“tongue”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk tunge (“tongue”), Faroese, Icelandic, and Swedish tunga (“tongue”), Gothic 𐍄𐌿𐌲𐌲𐍉 (tuggō, “tongue”), Irish teanga (“tongue”), Asturian and Catalan llengua (“tongue”), Aragonese luenga (“tongue”), French langue (“tongue”), Galician and Latin lingua (“tongue”), Leonese llingua (“tongue”), Mirandese lhéngua (“tongue”), Portuguese língua (“tongue”), Spanish lengua (“tongue”), Belarusian and Russian язык (jazyk, “tongue”), Bulgarian ези́к (ezík, “tongue”), Czech and Slovak jazyk (“tongue”), Macedonian јазик (jazik, “tongue”), Polish język (“tongue”), Serbo-Croatian jèzik (“tongue”), Slovene jézik (“tongue”), Ukrainian язи́к (jazýk, “tongue”), Persian زبان (zabân, “tongue”), Sanskrit जि॒ह्वा (jihvā́, “tongue”). Doublet of language and lingua. The expected modern spelling, both phonetically and etymologically, would be tung. Using ⟨on⟩ for ⟨un⟩ was fairly common in Middle English; compare e.g. yong (“young”). The final ⟨gue⟩ arose to prevent tonge being misread with a soft /dʒ/. However, this spelling only became common at a time when the final ⟨e⟩ was already largely silent, so it is not clear why it was not simply dropped instead. Perhaps the spelling was influenced directly by French langue (“tongue”).

In classic literature

Synonyms

lingua, glossa, clapper

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