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:
Her son had a tongue-tie, a condition where the strip of skin connecting the tongue to the mouth is tighter than usual, making it almost impossible for him to latch on to her breast.
From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2024
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
Both women are calling for midwives and health visitors to be better trained to diagnose tongue-tie.
From BBC ● Feb. 12, 2022
Again, a mother may bring her infant for tongue-tie.
From The Nervous Child by Hector Charles Cameron
Even when she became tongue-tied and had to laugh her way out of it, her slips became endearing.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026
Titled Shy, it describes how Rapp became tongue-tied around the British musician when they toured together in 2023.
From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2025
Heinicke, a 10-year NFL veteran, has spent the last three weeks learning the complex scheme that at first had him tongue-tied while calling out a play.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 20, 2024
Giamatti watchers may have a hard time imagining the actor tongue-tied.
From New York Times ● Jan. 7, 2024
“I’ll get tongue-tied, and Kate will get steamed. It has to be you, Reynie.”
From "The Mysterious Benedict Society" by Trenton Lee Stewart
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 J. Hartley Manners
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.
