different between tongue vs idiom

English

Alternative forms

• tounge (obsolete, now considered a misspelling); tung (obsolete or informal/eye dialect); tong, tonge, toong, toongue, toung, toungue, tunge (all obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English tonge, tunge, tung, from Old English tunge, from Proto-West Germanic *tung?, from Proto-Germanic *tung? (“tongue”) (compare West Frisian tonge, Dutch tong, German Zunge, Danish tunge, Norwegian Bokmål tunge, Swedish tunga), from Proto-Indo-European *dn???wéh?s.

See also Old Irish tengae, Latin lingua, Tocharian A käntu, Tocharian B kantwo, Lithuanian liežùvis, Russian ???? (jazyk), Polish j?zyk, Old Armenian ????? (lezu), Avestan ????????????????????????? (hizuu?), Ashkun ž?, Kamkata-viri di?, Sanskrit ?????? (jihv??). Doublet of langue and lingua.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, US, Canada) IPA^(key): /t??/
• (UK, Northern) IPA^(key): /t??/
• (UK, Manchester) IPA^(key): /t???/, /t???/
• Rhymes: -??

Noun

tongue (plural tongues)

1. The flexible muscular organ in the mouth that is used to move food around, for tasting and that is moved into various positions to modify the flow of air from the lungs in order to produce different sounds in speech.
   • c. 1515–1516, published 1568, John Skelton, Again?t venemous tongues enpoy?oned with ?claunder and fal?e detractions &c.:

     But lering and lurking here and there like ?pies,
     The devil tere their tunges and pike out their ies!

2. (countable, uncountable) This organ, as taken from animals used for food (especially cows).?
   • 1902, E. Nesbit, Five Children and It, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1905, Chapter 4, p. 136,^[1]

     However you eat them, tongue and chicken and new bread are very good things, and no one minds being sprinkled a little with soda-water on a really fine hot day.# Any similar organ, such as the lingual ribbon, or odontophore, of a mollusk; the proboscis of a moth or butterfly; or the lingua of an insect.

3. (metonymically) A language.

   Synonyms: idiom, language, lingo (colloquial)

   He was speaking in his native tongue.

   • 1591, Edmund Spenser, “The Ruines of Time” in Complaints, containing sundrie small poemes of the worlds vanitie, London: William Ponsonbie,^[2]

     [...] that great Towre, which is so much renownd

     For tongues confusion in holie writ,

   • 1726, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, London: Benjamin Motte, Volume 1, Part 2, Chapter 2, p. 178,^[3]

     When I pointed to any thing, she told me the Name of it in her own Tongue, so that in a few Days I was able to call for whatever I had a mind to.

   • 1878, Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native, Book 1, Chapter 7,^[4]

     To dwell on a heath without studying its meanings was like wedding a foreigner without learning his tongue.

   • 1958, Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, New York: Knopf, 1992, Chapter 23, p. 166,^[5]

     Many of them come from distant places and although they speak your tongue they are ignorant of your customs.

   • 2002, Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex, New York: Picador, Book 2, p. 99,^[6]

     My grandfather, accustomed to the multifarious conjugations of ancient Greek verbs, had found English, for all its incoherence, a relatively simple tongue to master.

4. (obsolete) Speakers of a language, collectively.
   • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Isaiah 66.18,^[7]

     I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory.

5. (obsolete) Voice (the distinctive sound of a person's speech); accent (distinctive manner of pronouncing a language).
   • c. 1596, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene 6,^[8]

     Who are you? Tell me, for more certainty,

     Albeit I’ll swear that I do know your tongue.

   • 1748, Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Roderick Random, London: J. Osborn, Volume 1, Chapter 21, p. 173,^[9]

     [...] one of [the prisoners], whom by his tongue I knew to be a Scotchman, lamented most piteously [...]

6. Manner of speaking, often habitually.
   • c. 1515–1516, published 1568, John Skelton, Again?t venemous tongues enpoy?oned with ?claunder and fal?e detractions &c.:

     Al maters wel pondred and wel to be regarded,
     How ?huld a fals lying tung then be rewarded?

   • 1715, Daniel Defoe, The Family Instructor, London: Eman. Matthews, Volume 1, Part 2, Dialogue 2, p. 211,^[10]

     [...] his wicked way of Living, his prophane Tongue, and his Contempt of Religion, had made him not very well receiv’d [...]

   • 1935, Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night, London: New English Library, 1970, Chapter 8, p. 205,^[11]

     I’m afraid I’ve inherited my uncle’s tongue and my mother’s want of tact.

   • 1952, John Steinbeck, East of Eden, London: Heinemann, Part 1, Chapter 2, p. 8,^[12]

     Samuel had no equal for soothing hysteria and bringing quiet to a frightened child. It was the sweetness of his tongue and the tenderness of his soul.

   • 1972, Hortense Calisher, Herself, New York: Arbor House, Part 4, p. 369,^[13]

     [...] Frank Marcus’ Sister George, technically a quite ordinary comedy in the old style [...] was remarkable [...] for the frank tongue of its Lesbians [...]

7. (metonymically) A person speaking in a specified manner (most often plural).
   • 1860, George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Book 7, Chapter 3,^[14]

     I know that we must keep apart for a long while; cruel tongues would force us apart, if nothing else did.

   • 1936, Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, Part 3, Chapter 30,^[15]

     [...] it was obvious to his listeners that Pittypat, in his mind, was still a plump and charming miss of sixteen who must be sheltered against evil tongues.

   • 2007, Ng?g? wa Thiong'o, Wizard of the Crow, New York: Knopf Doubleday, Book 4, p. 592,^[16]

     [...] the drunk, who had been a permanent fixture in that bar, changed location and thereafter moved from bar to bar, saying to inquisitive tongues, Too long a stay in one seat tires the buttocks.

8. The power of articulate utterance; speech generally.
   • 1717, John Dryden (translator), Ovid’s Metamorphoses in fifteen books, London: Jacob Tonson, “The Story of Pygmalion and the Statue,” p. 344,^[17]

     Parrots imitating Human Tongue

9. (obsolete) Discourse; fluency of speech or expression.
10. (obsolete, uncountable) Discourse; fluency of speech or expression.
    • c. 1597, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, Act V, Scene 2,^[18]

      [...] fellows, soldiers, friends,

      Better consider what you have to do

      Than I, that have not well the gift of tongue,

      Can lift your blood up with persuasion.

    • 1692, Roger L’Estrange, Fables of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists with Morals and Reflexions, London: R. Sare et al., ^[19]

      Much Tongue, and much Judgment seldom go together, for Talking and Thinking are Two Quite Differing Faculties,

    • 1876, George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Chapter 31,^[20]

      “[...] this Mr. Grandcourt has wonderful little tongue. Everything must be done dummy-like without his ordering.”

      “Then he’s the more whip, I doubt,” said Mrs. Girdle. “She’s got tongue enough, I warrant her [...]”

11. (obsolete) Honourable discourse; eulogy.
    • 1621, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Thierry and Theodoret, Act V, in The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, 1812, Volume 12, p. 374,^[21]

      She was born noble; let that title find her

      A private grave, but neither tongue nor honour!

12. (religion, often in the plural) Glossolalia.

    Synonym: speaking in tongues

    • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13.8,^[22]

      Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

13. In a shoe, the flap of material that goes between the laces and the foot (so called because it resembles a tongue in the mouth).
    • 1990, J. M. Coetzee, Age of Iron, New York: Random House, Chapter 3, p. 96,^[23]

      I caught a glimpse of a brown boot, the tongue flapping, the sole tied on with string.

    • 2006, Sarah Waters, The Night Watch, London: Virago, Chapter 2, p. 53,^[24]

      [...] her low-heeled shoes had flat fringed tongues to them—the kind of shoes you expected to see on a golf-course, or a Scottish highland, somewhere expensively hearty like that.

14. Any large or long physical protrusion on an automotive or machine part or any other part that fits into a long groove on another part.
15. A projection, or slender appendage or fixture.

16. A long, narrow strip of land, projecting from the mainland into a sea or lake.
17. The pole of a vehicle; especially, the pole of an ox cart, to the end of which the oxen are yoked.
    • 1986, Hortense Calisher, The Bobby-Soxer, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, p. 91,^[25]

      Far to the right, where the main pile sloped out, his cart reared tongue upward, like a plow.

18. The clapper of a bell.
    • c. 1595, William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1,^[26]

      The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve:

    • 1940, Richard Wright, Native Son, London: Jonathan Cape, Book 2, p. 156,^[27]

      [...] the bell clanged so loud that he could hear the iron tongue clapping against the metal sides each time it swung to and fro [...]

19. (figuratively) An individual point of flame from a fire.
    • 1818, Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Revolt of Islam, London: C. and J. Ollier, Canto 3, stanza 13, p. 63,^[28]

      Then up a steep and dark and narrow stair

      We wound, until the torches’ fiery tongue

      Amid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung.
20. A small sole (type of fish).
21. (nautical) A short piece of rope spliced into the upper part of standing backstays, etc.; also, the upper main piece of a mast composed of several pieces.
22. (music) A reed.
23. (geology) A division of formation; A layer or member of a formation that pinches out in one direction.

Translations

See also

• ????

Verb

tongue (third-person singular simple present tongues, present participle tonguing, simple past and past participle tongued)

1. (music, transitive, intransitive) On a wind instrument, to articulate a note by starting the air with a tap of the tongue, as though by speaking a 'd' or 't' sound (alveolar plosive).

2. (slang) To manipulate with the tongue, as in kissing or oral sex.
3. To protrude in relatively long, narrow sections.

4. To join by means of a tongue and groove.

5. (intransitive, obsolete) To talk; to prate.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Dryden to this entry?)

6. (transitive, obsolete) To speak; to utter.
   • c. 1609, William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Act V, Scene 4,^[29]

     ’Tis still a dream, or else such stuff as madmen

     Tongue and brain not;

7. (transitive, obsolete) To chide; to scold.
   • c. 1604, William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act IV, Scene 4,^[30]

     How might she tongue me!

Derived terms

See also

• gloss-
• glossal
• lingual
• linguiform
• linguo-

References

• tongue on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• tounge

For Wiktionary's handling of idioms, see Wiktionary:Idioms

English

Etymology

From Middle French idiome, and its source, Late Latin idioma, from Ancient Greek ?????? (idí?ma, “a peculiarity, property, a peculiar phraseology, idiom”), from ????????? (idioûsthai, “to make one's own, appropriate to oneself”), from ????? (ídios, “one's own, pertaining to oneself, private, personal, peculiar, separate”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /??d??m/

Noun

idiom (countable and uncountable, plural idioms or idiomata)

1. A manner of speaking, a mode of expression peculiar to a language, person, or group of people.

   Synonyms: idiomaticness, idiomaticity

2. A language or language variety; specifically, a restricted dialect used in a given historical period, context etc.
   • 2010, Christopher Hitchens, "The Other L-Word", Vanity Fair, 13 Jan 2010:

     Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of "like" has spread through the idiom of the young.

3. An established expression whose meaning may not be not deducible from the literal meanings of its component words, often peculiar to a given language.
   • 2008, Patricia Hampl, “You’re History”, in Patricia Hampl and Elaine Tyler May (editors), Tell Me True: Memoir, History, and Writing a Life, Minnesota Historical Society, ?ISBN, page 134:

     You’re history, we say […] . Surely it is an American idiom. Impossible to imagine a postwar European saying, “You’re history. . . . That’s history,” meaning fuhgeddaboudit, pal.

4. An artistic style (for example, in art, architecture, or music); an instance of such a style.

5. (programming) A programming construct or phraseology that is characteristic of the language.

Synonyms

• (language variety): dialect (loosely), language (loosely), languoid, lect, vernacular (loosely)
• (phrase): expression (loosely), form of words (loosely), idiotism, locution (loosely), phrase (loosely)

Derived terms

Related terms

• idiolect
• idiosyncratic
• idiot

Translations

See also

• Category:Idioms by language

Further reading

• American idioms - a comprehensive list of idioms, browsable through alphabetical links. Includes parts of speech, definitions and example sentences.
• English and American Idioms - RSS subscription channel
• Glossary of Linguistics
• Today's English Idioms at GoEnglish.com

• idiom in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• idiom in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• imido, imido-, modii

Czech

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [??d?jom]
• Hyphenation: idiom

Noun

idiom m inan

1. idiom (established expression whose meaning is not deducible from the literal meanings of its component words)
   • 1972, Nový orient:

     P?ed b?žným „Nashledanou", které Peršané vyjad?ují slovy „nech? je B?h vaším opatrovníkem", dáme p?ednost idiomu „vaše laskavost nebo pozornost je (byla) nesmírná" nebo „nech? se vysoká laskavost nezmenší" ...

   • 1985, Studie a práce linguistické:

     Stejn? málo významné byly pro IF pokusy p?iblížit význam idiom? ve vágních pojmech p?enesenosti, obraznosti, pr?hlednosti apod.

   • 1996, ?asopis pro moderní filologii:

     Trochu konzervativní ?eský uživatel Schemannova slovníku bude možná zpo?átku postrádat u n?kterých idiom? jejich vysv?tlení, jak byl zvyklý kup?íkladu z dosud (do r. 1993) nejobsažn?jšího slovníku tohoto typu ...

   • 2005, Zden?k St?íbrný, Proud ?asu:

     Vyjád?il to p?kným anglickým idiomem „They have added insult to your injury“.

   • 2014, František ?ermák, Jazyk a slovník. Vybrané lingvistické studie:

     U idiom? pak m?žeme postulovat existenci p?edevším po?etných sekundárních symbol? (otev?ená hlava), pop?. ikon? (kamenný obli?ej), mén? ?asto však už sekundárních index? (co do, kór když).

Declension

Further reading

• idiom in P?íru?ní slovník jazyka ?eského, 1935–1957
• idiom in Slovník spisovného jazyka ?eského, 1960–1971, 1989
• idiom in Akademický slovník cizích slov, 1995, at prirucka.ujc.cas.cz
• idiom in Nový encyklopedický slovník ?eštiny, czechency.org
• ?eská frazeologie, Naše ?e? (1984)

Indonesian

Etymology

From Dutch idioom.

Noun

idiom (first-person possessive idiomku, second-person possessive idiommu, third-person possessive idiomnya)

1. idiom (idiomatic expression)
2. idiom (artistic style)
3. (rare, dated) idiom (language or language variety)

Further reading

• “idiom” in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI) Daring, Jakarta: Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa, Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Republik Indonesia, 2016.

Polish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?id.j?m/

Noun

idiom m inan

1. idiom (idiomatic expression)
2. idiom (artistic style)
3. (rare, dated) idiom (language or language variety)

Declension

Romanian

Etymology

From French idiome

Noun

idiom n (plural idiomuri)

1. idiom

Declension

Serbo-Croatian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /id?o?m/
• Hyphenation: i?di?om

Noun

idì?m m (Cyrillic spelling ??????)

1. idiom (idiomatic expression)
2. idiom (artistic style)
3. (linguistics) idiom (language or language variety)

Declension