tongue-tie

1. 1.

   deprive of speech

   “When he met his idol, the young man was tongue-tied”

   Broaderdeprive

Questions about tongue-tie

What does tongue-tie mean?

tongue-tie means "deprive of speech".

How many syllables are in tongue-tie?

tongue-tie has 3 syllables and divides as ton-gue--tie 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.

Is tongue-tie a common word?

tongue-tie 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.