Word.ws English Dictionary

loosen one's tongue

loosen one's tongue is the alternative form of loosen someone's tongue.

Meaning of loosen someone's tongue

Verb

loosen someone's tongue (third-person singular simple present loosens someone's tongue, present participle loosening someone's tongue, simple past and past participle loosened someone's tongue)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To cause one to speak more freely; to cause one to discuss a subject that would not usually be discussed.
    • He made a long stay in the dining-room after dinner, and, I fear, took an unusual quantity of wine, but not enough to loosen his tongue: for when he came in and found me quietly occupied with my book, too busy to lift my head on his entrance, he merely murmured an expression of suppressed...1848, Anne Brontë, chapter 24, in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Forms of loosen one's tongue

third-person singular presentloosens one's tongue
present participleloosening one's tongue
past participleloosened one's tongue
pastloosened one's tongue

Questions about loosen one's tongue

What is loosen one's tongue the alternative form of?
Loosen one's tongue is the alternative form of loosen someone's tongue.

Words near loosen one's tongue in the dictionary

  1. loosely
  2. loosely-typed
  3. Loosemore
  4. Loosemores
  5. loosen
  6. loosen one's tongue
  7. loosen someone's lips
  8. loosen someone's tongue
  9. loosen the apron strings
  10. loosen the purse strings
  11. loosen up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: loosen one's tongue (page history and authors); loosen someone'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: “loosen one's tongue.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/loosen_one%27s_tongue. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.