Word.ws English Dictionary

bit one's tongue

bit one's tongue is the simple past of bite one's tongue.

Meaning of bite one's tongue

Verb

bite one's tongue (third-person singular simple present bites one's tongue, present participle biting one's tongue, simple past bit one's tongue, past participle bitten one's tongue)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To resist the urge to speak out, especially in order to avoid saying something inappropriate or likely to cause a dispute.
    • She wanted to go see a movie called Gigi, which I was not too thrilled about. But being a gentleman, I bit my tongue and said, “Okay.”2011, Mike Pappas, Growing Up the Greek Way in the Big Apple, page 103
    Synonyms:
    bite one's lip

Questions about bit one's tongue

What is bit one's tongue the simple past of?
Bit one's tongue is the simple past of bite one's tongue.

Words near bit one's tongue in the dictionary

  1. bit on granite
  2. bit on the side
  3. bit one's lip
  4. bit one's nails
  5. bit one's thumb
  6. bit one's tongue
  7. bit part
  8. bit parts
  9. bit plane
  10. bit planes
  11. bit player

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bit one's tongue (page history and authors); bite one's tongue (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bit one's tongue.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bit_one%27s_tongue. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.