hound's-tongue

Questions about hound's-tongue

What does hound's-tongue mean?

hound's-tongue means "perennial shrub of North America having coarse tongue-shaped leaves and pale-blue to purple flowers". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in hound's-tongue?

hound's-tongue has 3 syllables and divides as hound'-s-ton-gue under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for hound's-tongue?

Close synonyms include Cynoglossum virginaticum, Cynoglossum officinale. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is hound's-tongue a common word?

hound's-tongue is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.