entry
tongue
/tʌŋ/Muscular mouth organ; speech, language, or projecting shape
From Proto-Germanic, ultimately Proto-Indo-European tongue (Tongue).
from PIE root *dnghu- "tongue." By normal evolution in Modern English it would be *tung . For substitution of -o- for...
from Proto-Germanic *tungō (source also of Old Saxon and Old Norse tunga , Old Frisian tunge , Middle Dutch tonghe ,...
+1 more sourcefrom Old English tunge
from Middle English tongue, a late spelling of tong(e), tung(e)
Word Ancestry
from PIE root *dnghu- "tongue." By normal evolution in Modern English it would be *tung . For substitution of -o- for...
from Proto-Germanic *tungō (source also of Old Saxon and Old Norse tunga , Old Frisian tunge , Middle Dutch tonghe ,...
+1 more sourcefrom Old English tunge
from Middle English tongue, a late spelling of tong(e), tung(e)
A tongue began as something much more than a pink muscular organ: in Old English, tunge could mean the organ, speech itself, or an entire language community. The word reaches back to the reconstructed Indo-European form *dnghu-, then traveled through Proto-Germanic *tungō before arriving as Old English tunge. Its modern spelling is a historical oddity: Middle English scribes substituted on for un, and later added -gue to keep the g from being read with a soft sound—although the final e was already mostly silent. By the 1520s, “tongue” could mean a foreign language, while the Pentecostal “speaking in tongues” preserved the older connection between the organ and speech. Its cousins are scattered across Europe: Latin lingua gives us lingual and linguist, French has langue, and German still has Zunge. So every time you call a language a “tongue,” you are using a bodily metaphor so ancient that it predates English itself.
The Story
A tongue began as something much more than a pink muscular organ: in Old English, tunge could mean the organ, speech itself, or an entire language community. The word reaches back to the reconstructed Indo-European form *dnghu-, then traveled through Proto-Germanic *tungō before arriving as Old English tunge. Its modern spelling is a historical oddity: Middle English scribes substituted on for un, and later added -gue to keep the g from being read with a soft sound—although the final e was already mostly silent. By the 1520s, “tongue” could mean a foreign language, while the Pentecostal “speaking in tongues” preserved the older connection between the organ and speech. Its cousins are scattered across Europe: Latin lingua gives us lingual and linguist, French has langue, and German still has Zunge. So every time you call a language a “tongue,” you are using a bodily metaphor so ancient that it predates English itself.
Kin & Kindred
From 'tongue'·Tongue; organ of speech and taste
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Free Dictionary
Urban Dictionary
Wikipedia
Wiktionary