Word.ws English Dictionary

loosened someone's tongue

loosened someone's tongue is the simple past and past participle 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

Questions about loosened someone's tongue

What is loosened someone's tongue the simple past and past participle of?
Loosened someone's tongue is the simple past and past participle of loosen someone's tongue.

Words near loosened someone's tongue in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: loosened someone'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.

Last updated:

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