hold one's tongue

Idioms  

1. Also,. Keep quiet, remain silent, as in If you don't hold your tongue you'll have to go outside, or Jenny kept her peace about the wedding. The idiom with tongue uses hold in the sense of “restrain,” while the others use hold and keep in the sense of “preserve.” Chaucer used the first idiom in The Tale of Melibus (c. 1387): “Thee is better hold thy tongue still, than for to speak.” The variant appears in the traditional wedding service, telling anyone who knows that a marriage should not take place to “speak now or forever hold your peace.” [First half of 1300s] Also see keep quiet.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

hold one's tongue

At least this once, one could hold one's tongue.

From Time Magazine Archive

But I say again, as I said at first: if one could only hold one's tongue as to what one sees, one would be the better for it.

From Pepper & Salt or, Seasoning for Young Folk by Howard Pyle

Anyway, one can't hold one's tongue when one has a feeling, a tangible feeling, that one might be a help if only....

From Crime and Punishment by Constance Garnett

An attitude of positive urbanity toward life was not to be expected; it was doing one's duty to hold one's tongue and keep one's hands off one's own windpipe, and other people's.

From Roderick Hudson by Henry James

Heaven! sir," said she—"Well, I must not speak, and yet it is certainly very hard to be obliged to hold one's tongue when one hears."—"

From History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Related Words

• cut off
• gag
• muffle
• mute
• muzzle
• quash
• quell
• squelch
• stifle
• subdue
• suppress