Dictionary.com
Thesaurus.com

triple-tongue

American  
[trip-uhl-tuhng] / ˈtrɪp əlˌtʌŋ /

verb (used without object)

Music.
triple-tongued, triple-tonguing
  1. to interrupt the wind flow by moving the tongue as if pronouncing t and t and k successively, especially in playing rapid passages or staccato notes on a brass instrument.


triple-tongue British  

verb

  1. music to play (very quick staccato passages of notes grouped in threes) on a wind instrument by a combination of single- and double-tonguing Compare single-tongue double-tongue

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Etymology

Origin of triple-tongue

First recorded in 1900–05

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:

He is happy strutting before any good hot band where he can introduce himself as "The Reverend Satchel Mouth" and proceed to triple-tongue a cornet at incredible speed.

From Time Magazine Archive

He is a triple-tongued double dealer, a glib Vesuvius of fantasy and falsehood, a perpetual-emotion machine with nary an honest feeling.

From Time Magazine Archive

As the first guest on a new Canadian TV show, triple-tongued Producer David Susskind, 41, lost no time unsettling citizens on both sides of the border.

From Time Magazine Archive

A more sophisticated clientele moves beyond the midway to seek out and applaud Dr. Nabokov, the butterfly chaser, dealer in anagrammatical gimcracks, triple-tongued punster, animator of Doppelgänger, shuffler of similes.

From Time Magazine Archive

When he was all afoot his scaled head, spike-crowned and triple-tongued, rose higher than the broken tower’s height, and his taloned forefeet rested on the rubble of the town below.

From "A Wizard of Earthsea" by Ursula K. Le Guin

The design of this banner was a red triple-tongued flame, symbolic of the tongues of fire that came down at Pentecost.

From Ten Boys from History by Williams, George Alfred

Their orchestra also featured crisp saxophones and triple-tonguing trumpets, a legacy of the Big Band era.

From Washington Times May 3, 2015

Vocabulary.com logo
by dictionary.com

Join 12,000,000 vocabulary learners

Start learning new words today on VocabTrainer.
You'll remember them forever.

Start training