tongue

Definition

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.

Etymology

From Middle English tongue, a late spelling of tong(e), tung(e), from Old English tunge, from Proto-West Germanic *tungā, from Proto-Germanic *tungǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s (“tongue”). Doublet of language and lingua. Cognates include Dutch tong, German Zunge, Swedish tunga, Gothic 𐍄𐌿𐌲𐌲𐍉 (tuggō), and further Irish teanga, Latin lingua, Russian язык (jazyk), Persian زبان (zabân), etc. See the Indo-European entry for more. 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”).

Example Sentences

• "But lering and lurking here and there like ſpies,"
• "cold tongue with mustard"
• "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."