Word.ws English Dictionary

tongue-tying

tongue-tying is the present participle and gerund of tongue-tie.

Meaning of tongue-tie

Verb

tongue-tie (third-person singular simple present tongue-ties, present participle tongue-tying, simple past and past participle tongue-tied)

  1. (transitive) To disconcert or fluster (a person) so that they cannot speak coherently.
    • Marry—as the friendly vapour ascended, how his prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the ligaments, which tongue-tied him, were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded a statist!1833, [Charles Lamb], “Preface. By a Friend of the Late Elia.”, in The Last Essays of Elia. […], London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page ix

See all 3 meanings of tongue-tie

Questions about tongue-tying

What is tongue-tying the present participle and gerund of?
Tongue-tying is the present participle and gerund of tongue-tie.

Words near tongue-tying in the dictionary

  1. tongue-tie
  2. tongue-tied
  3. tongue-ties
  4. tongue-twister
  5. tongue-twisters
  6. tongue-tying
  7. tongue-work
  8. tongue-wrestling
  9. tonguectomies
  10. tonguectomy
  11. tongued

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tongue-tying (page history and authors); tongue-tie (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: “tongue-tying.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tongue-tying. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.