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
Ms. Henstrom is part of a booming industry of lactation consultants and dentists that aggressively markets the procedures, even for babies that have no signs of tongue-tie and despite a small risk of serious complications.
From New York Times ● Feb. 15, 2024
He also suggested Patient A underwent a lingual tongue-tie release, which he said would allow her to rest with her tongue on the roof of her mouth and strengthen the jaw.
From BBC ● Nov. 14, 2022
Both women are calling for midwives and health visitors to be better trained to diagnose tongue-tie.
From BBC ● Feb. 12, 2022
No authority existed that could tongue-tie his art.
From My Tropic Isle by Banfield, E. J. (Edmund James)
Make it five minutes,” the software would, in theory, be able to figure out what the tongue-tied person meant to say.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 30, 2024
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
He hung his head, feeling tongue-tied and naive.
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
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.
