Word.ws English Dictionary

parseltongue

parseltongue proper noun: a fictional language of snakes in the Harry Potter universe.

Proper noun

parseltongue

  1. A fictional language of snakes in the Harry Potter universe.
    • Now I can't get this out of my head - them hissing and whispering at one another like they're speaking in parseltongue.2005 December 1, Aisling Willow Grey, “Re: AMC -- Kendall (and Ryan too)”, in rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc (Usenet), message-ID <0001HW.BFB4D67000210837F0284550@news.verizon.net>
    • Slither around Santa Fe's Rattlesnake Museum while practicing your parseltongue.2007 April 3, Let's Go Inc., Let's Go Roadtripping USA: The Complete Coast-to-Coast Guide to America, 2nd edition, Macmillan, page 496

Examples of parseltongue in a sentence

  • “Parseltongue, that's what I need,” I murmured out loud as I brushed my teeth.2009 September 22, Sara Paretsky, Hardball: A V.I. Warshawski Novel, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, →OL:
  • I'm still toying with the possibility that he was actually a wizard speaking parseltongue.2013 January 6, Will Rogers, “God Of War’s Descent”, in WhatCulture, archived from the original on 16 Mar 2013, retrieved 01 Feb 2013:

Origin of parseltongue

Coined by British author and philanthropist J. K. Rowling in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998) as Parseltongue. J. K. Rowling stated that she based the term on an "old word for someone who has a problem with the mouth, like a hare lip".

Questions about parseltongue

What does parseltongue mean?
Parseltongue means a fictional language of snakes in the Harry Potter universe.
How do you use parseltongue in a sentence?
“Parseltongue, that's what I need,” I murmured out loud as I brushed my teeth.
What part of speech is parseltongue?
Parseltongue is a proper noun.

Words near parseltongue in the dictionary

  1. parselenes
  2. parselet
  3. parselets
  4. Parsell
  5. Parsells
  6. parseltongue
  7. parsemage
  8. parsemé
  9. parser
  10. parsers
  11. parses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: parseltongue (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: “parseltongue.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/parseltongue. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.