tongue·less

(tŭng′lĭs)

adj.

1. Having no tongue.

2. Lacking the faculty of speech; mute.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Adj.	1.	tongueless - lacking a tongue; "tongueless moccasins" tongued - provided with or resembling a tongue; often used in combination; "tongued shoes"; "tongued boards"; "toungued lightning"; "long-tongued"
	2.	tongueless - expressed without speech; "a mute appeal"; "a silent curse"; "best grief is tongueless"- Emily Dickinson; "the words stopped at her lips unsounded"; "unspoken grief"; "choking exasperation and wordless shame"- Thomas Wolfe mute, unspoken, wordless inarticulate, unarticulate - without or deprived of the use of speech or words; "inarticulate beasts"; "remained stupidly inarticulate and saying something noncommittal"; "inarticulate with rage"; "an inarticulate cry"

Translations

sprachlos

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

they deified the crocodile of the nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or as least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion.

View in context

LAHORE -- A play titled Bayzabaan (tongueless) was staged at Alhamra Art Centre, The Mall, on Tuesday.

Bayzabaan staged at Alhamra

They refuse, of course, but he and his similarly tongueless cult members later reappear at the family's temporary refuge to offer them sanctuary, while revealing their sinister motives.

'The Silence': Soundalike horrors and survival themes

Yet, having been kept under these conditions for about a year or so, voiceless Philomela literally weaves her tale by embroidering the past year scene by scene onto a cloth; even though she is tongueless, she finds a way of delivering her message to her sister Procne.

Chaucer's Mythic Men in the Legend of Good Women

Sorrow and lamentation are the chords many of these poems strike: "The fallen church deconsecrates / forgotten ritual with a broken cross" (Street); "the syllables / Curtailed, half heard, like tongueless bells / From empty steeples endlessly" (Thwaite, "Eccles").

THE CHURCH ELEGY: RECUPERATING ANGLICAN MEMORY IN POST-WAR ENGLISH POETRY

Nothing else able to cipher siphon possible meanings any crazy dictionaries, hip cats tongueless hepcats this morning are you really as crazy as this seems?

Mnemonic of Your Palindrome: Sewing Lesson (In a New Kiss Horizon)

But to her heart, her heart was voluble, Paining with eloquence her balmy side; As though a tongueless nightingale should swell Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.

Nightingale: a gloss: a special APR supplement

Even Edison uses surprisingly macabre language when he calls his invention a "tongueless, toothless instrument" that "centuries after you have crumbled to dust will repeat again and again" every word you have said to it.

Technologies of Forgetting: Phonographs, Lyric Voice, and Rossetti's Woodspurge

Other ghosts include a madman walking on the roof on stormy nights, some gray ladies haunting the chapel, a tongueless woman wandering across the grounds, tearing at her mouth, "Jack the Runner," a thin man racing up the drive to the castle, a woman with mournful eyes clutching at an upper window as though imprisoned, and a tall figure dressed in a long, dark cloak.

Ghosts: illusion or reality?

Maybe when babel fell, what was left were some brown girls dancing, making tongueless sounds, making heaven with the bottoms of feet.

THE DIASPORA ISSUE: Don't Try Us

Cecil's forbidden personal residence, the looming tongueless servant, Mongo, and, finally, the terrifyingly sentient scorpion-hornets.

Flickers