单词 | tongue |
释义 | tongue (tʌŋ ) Word forms: tongues 1. countable noun [usually poss NOUN] B1+ Your tongue is the soft movable part inside your mouth which you use for tasting, eating, and speaking. I walked over to the mirror and stuck my tongue out. She ran her tongue around her lips. 2. countable noun You can use tongue to refer to the kind of things that a person says. ...her sharp wit and quick tongue. She had a nasty tongue, but I liked her. Synonyms: utterance, voice, speech, articulation 3. countable noun B2 A tongue is a language. [literary] The French feel passionately about their native tongue. Synonyms: language, speech, vernacular, talk 4. See also mother tongue 5. variable noun B1+ Tongue is the cooked tongue of an ox or sheep. It is usually eaten cold. 6. countable noun The tongue of a shoe or boot is the piece of leather which is underneath the laces. 7. countable noun A tongue of something such as fire or land is a long thin piece of it. [literary] A yellow tongue of flame shot upwards. [+ of] ...a silver, frozen tongue of water. 8. tongue in cheek phrase A tongue-in-cheek remark or attitude is not serious, although it may seem to be. ...a lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek approach. This is all slightly tongue-in-cheek, I'd like to make that clear. Were they written tongue-in-cheek, or with an underlying conviction? 9. to hold your tongue phrase If you hold your tongue, you do not say anything even though you might want to or be expected to, because it is the wrong time to say it. Douglas held his tongue, preferring not to speak out on a politically sensitive issue. 10. to get your tongue around something phrase [VERB inflects, PHRASE noun, usually with brd-neg] If you say that you can not get your tongue round or around a particular word or phrase, you mean that you find it very difficult to pronounce. 11. slip of the tongue phrase If you describe something you said as a slip of the tongue, you mean that you said it by mistake. At one stage he referred to Anna as John's fiancée, but later said that was a slip of the tongue. 12. to bite your tongue phrase If you bite your lip or your tongue, you stop yourself from saying something that you want to say, because it would be the wrong thing to say in the circumstances. I must learn to bite my lip. He bit his tongue as he found himself on the point of saying 'follow that car'. Idioms: a slip of the tongue something that you said by mistake Brown had committed a slip of the tongue, saying that he had 'saved the world' when he meant to say that he had saved Britain's banks. Easy Learning Idioms Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers something is on the tip of your tongue said to mean that you are sure you know something, such as a word, an answer, or a name, but that you cannot remember it at the moment I know the answer to this question. No, no, don't tell me. Oh, it's on the tip of my tongue. Easy Learning Idioms Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers something was on the tip of your tongue said to mean that you really wanted to make a remark or ask a question about something, but that you decided not to `Do you know anything about this?' he asked after a while. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him what I'd seen but, in the end, I said nothing. Easy Learning Idioms Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers be unable to get your tongue round something [British] to have difficulty pronouncing a word or phrase When my brother was little, he couldn't get his tongue round the word `bicycle'; it always came out as `bi-ci-click'. Easy Learning Idioms Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers bite your tongue to not say a particular thing, even though you want to, because it would be the wrong thing to say at the time, or because you are waiting for a better time to speak I wanted to tell him how much I would miss him, but I bit my tongue. Easy Learning Idioms Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers find your tongue to begin to talk, when you have previously been too shy or frightened to say anything After a long silence, Tom eventually found his tongue. Easy Learning Idioms Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers give someone the rough side of your tongue or give someone the rough edge of your tongue to speak angrily or harshly to someone about something that they have done wrong He's really going to give the boy the rough side of his tongue. Easy Learning Idioms Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers speak with forked tongue to lie or deliberately mislead people He speaks with forked tongue. I don't trust him and I don't like him. Easy Learning Idioms Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers tongue in cheek used to describe a remark or a piece of writing that is meant to be funny and ironic, and is not meant to be taken seriously I think people are taking all this more seriously than we intended. It was supposed to be tongue in cheek. Easy Learning Idioms Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers Collocations: swollen tongue His lips are dry, his tongue swollen. Christianity Today (2000) Other symptoms include a high temperature, flushed face and red, swollen tongue. The Sun (2014) A swollen tongue poked out of inflamed lips. Times, Sunday Times (2009) Translations: Chinese: 舌头 Japanese: 舌 |
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