tonguing

tonguing is the present participle and gerund of tongue.

Noun

tonguing (countable and uncountable, plural tonguings)

A licking or lapping with the tongue.
- Your partner will be so eager to be licked and caressed that your introductory tonguings in this area just won't be enough.1992, The Ultimate Sex Book
A technique used with wind instruments to enunciate different notes using the tongue on the reed or mouthpiece.
(historical) flensing, cutting off strips of blubber in the butchering of a whale.
- Soon may the Wellerman come/To bring us sugar and tea and rum./One day, when the tonguing is done/We'll take our leave and go.Unknown, recorded 1971, Unknown, "Soon May the Wellerman Come"
- While there had been four parties operating during 1837, the following season saw a reduction to three stations and one 'tonguing party' that salvaged blubber from the whale carcasses discarded by pelagic whaling vessels.2010, Martin Gibbs, The Shore Whalers of Western Australia, page 17
French kissing

tongue (third-person singular simple present tongues, present participle tonguing, simple past and past participle tongued)

(ambitransitive) On a wind instrument, to articulate a note by starting the air with a tap of the tongue, as though by speaking a 'd' or 't' sound (alveolar plosive).
- Playing wind instruments involves tonguing on the reed or mouthpiece.
(transitive) To manipulate with the tongue.
- [T]he cattle tongued at the damp grass, licking rather than grazing. […]1985, Benjamin Capps, The Trail to Ogallala, TCU Press, →ISBN, page 88
(slang, sometimes, transitive, vulgar) To lick, penetrate or manipulate with the tongue during flirting or oral sex.
- Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[8]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC
To protrude in relatively long, narrow sections.
- a soil horizon that tongues into clay
To join by means of a tongue and groove.
- to tongue boards together
(intransitive, obsolete) To talk; to prate.

plural	tonguings

What does tonguing mean?: Tonguing means a licking or lapping with the tongue.
What is tonguing the present participle and gerund of?: Tonguing is the present participle and gerund of tongue.
What part of speech is tonguing?: Tonguing is a noun.
What is the plural of tonguing?: The plural of tonguing is tonguings.

Adapted from Wiktionary: tonguing (page history and authors); 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: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “tonguing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tonguing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.