tongue-tie
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
noun
Etymology
Origin of tongue-tie
First recorded in 1545–55; back formation from tongue-tied
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
An estimated 7% of babies are diagnosed with a condition called tongue-tie, in which the connection between the tongue and the floor of the mouth is too strong and limits tongue movement.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 29, 2024
The quick procedure, known as a tongue-tie release, involves a dentist or doctor snipping a tight band of tissue connecting the tongue to the bottom of the mouth.
From New York Times ● Dec. 18, 2023
Additional training is provided which includes recognising tongue-tie, its treatments and support.
From BBC ● Feb. 12, 2022
Some babies with the condition struggle to latch on to the breast, but awareness of it as an infant feeding issue can be poor, and tongue-tie can be hard to spot.
From BBC ● Feb. 12, 2022
And if you are to suffer, it would be right to tongue-tie that silver Bell, and leave the congregations to their selling of cabbages.
From The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 by Browning, Robert
Yet, that she made it at all makes every frame feel personal, and you hear her affection for the cadence of her occasionally tongue-tied subjects.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2025
Speech production is a complex neural phenomenon that has left researchers explaining it tongue-tied.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 11, 2023
“There wasn’t …” It was the first time I’d ever seen Harry tongue-tied.
From Slate ● May 27, 2023
During our studio visit, Bradford turned uncharacteristically tongue-tied when he tried to articulate the sculpture’s relationship to that period.
From New York Times ● Apr. 19, 2023
Someone with clear and persuasive words, and I’m so easily tongue-tied.
From "Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins
Still, Americans are indebted to Canadians when it comes to this tongue-tying fruit.
From Time ● Aug. 21, 2014
Americans, he believed, should go wherever they wanted to go, although he said so in a potentially tongue-tying sentence: "Let us go on whithersoever our destiny may lead us."
From Salon ● Feb. 21, 2011
Best of all though may be the new woodchuck spot, once and for all answering the age old tongue-tying question "how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"
From Washington Post ● Oct. 7, 2010
But it also has other attributes prized by veteran excuse makers: it's simple, requiring no complicated, tongue-tying explanation, universally understood, vaguely virtuous and hard to check.
From Time Magazine Archive
Poor Peg tried again at the absurd tongue-tying name.
From Peg O' My Heart by Manners, J. Hartley
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
