tongue

«tongue» in Mova's school dictionary: the soft, movable part inside your mouth that you use to… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a tongue, tongues)

meaning for a pupil

1) The tongue is the soft, movable part inside your mouth that you use to taste, eat and speak. tree →

2) A tongue is a language: «mother tongue». tree →

3) A tongue of a shoe is the flap under the laces. tree →

4) A tongue of fire or land is a long, thin shape like a tongue. tree →

5) To give tongue means to bark or howl loudly, as hunting dogs do when they have found a scent. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science lessons, the tongue is covered with taste buds that sense sweet, salty, sour, bitter and savoury (umami). It also moves food and helps make sounds for speech. In manners, sticking out your tongue is rude. Phrases: «hold your tongue» (stay quiet), «on the tip of my tongue» (almost remembered), «tongue-twister», «bite your tongue» (stop yourself saying something), «tongue in cheek» (joking).

examples

• Your tongue helps you taste food. tree →
• Don't stick your tongue out — it's rude. tree →
• The doctor looked at my tongue. tree →
• Her name is on the tip of my tongue. tree →
• «She sells seashells» is a tongue-twister. tree →
• French is his mother tongue. tree →
• Pull the tongue of your shoe up before you tie the laces. tree →
• A dog cools down by hanging out its tongue. tree →
• Strike first and then give tongue. tree →

note

Spelled «tongue» (said «tung»); the «ue» is silent. Myth: the «tongue map» (each taste only in one zone) is wrong — all parts of the tongue can taste all tastes.

In the corpora

• The alligator snapping turtle lures fish with a pink worm-shaped flap on its tongue and then snaps its jaws shut.
• An echidna has no teeth and catches ants and termites with a long sticky tongue after breaking into their nests with strong claws.
• A cow wraps its long rough tongue round grass because it has no top front teeth, only a hard pad.
• A giraffe's dark tongue is about 45 to 50 centimetres long and pulls leaves past the thorns of acacia trees.
• The okapi's long tongue can reach its own eyes and ears to clean them.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «tongue» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.