Word.ws English Dictionary

loosen someone's tongue

loosen someone's tongue verb: to cause one to speak more freely; to cause one to discuss a subject that would not usually be discussed.

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
    • We relapsed into silence. Presently he laughed. “There’s something in this starlight that loosens one’s tongue. I’m an ass, and yet somehow I would like to tell you.”1896, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “Chapter 4”, in The Island of Doctor Moreau (Heinemann’s Colonial Library of Popular Fiction; 52), London: William Heinemann, →OCLC; republished as The Island of...

Forms of loosen someone's tongue

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

Questions about loosen someone's tongue

What does loosen someone's tongue mean?
Loosen someone's tongue means to cause one to speak more freely; to cause one to discuss a subject that would not usually be discussed.
What part of speech is loosen someone's tongue?
Loosen someone's tongue is a verb.
What is the past tense of loosen someone's tongue?
The past tense of loosen someone's tongue is loosened someone's tongue.

Words near loosen someone's tongue in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-loosen someone's tongue.ogg.

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