tongue-tied

adjective

Definition of tongue-tiednext
as in mute
unable to speak because you are nervous or shy She became tongue-tied whenever he was around. He gets tongue-tied in front of crowds.

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of tongue-tied My two companions—one of whom was Alabaster—seemed a bit tongue-tied. — Literary Hub, 22 July 2026 But on April 24, Stanford got tongue-tied when asked to explain her position on abolishing ICE. — David Weigel, semafor.com, 18 May 2026 At times, Raman was tongue-tied trying to answer simple questions. — Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times, 7 May 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for tongue-tied
  1. mute
  2. speechless
  3. incomprehensible
  4. inarticulate
  5. incoherent
  6. silent
Adjective
  • Below the video panel are buttons to end the live view, mute and unmute the speaker, and enable two-way talk.
    — John R. Delaney, PC Magazine, 21 Oct. 2026
  • While an ordinary walk might leave her mind racing toward work, looking for a particular color gave it something else to do, effectively putting all that other mental chatter on mute.
    — Angela Haupt, Time, 20 Oct. 2026
Definition of mute
Adjective
  • By the end, the audience is left almost speechless — and still thinking about this singular, deeply original performance long after Lyons has left the stage.
    — Rebecca Rosman, NPR, 31 Aug. 2026
  • His friends, from brother Luigi (Charlie Day) to Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) veer in a similar direction, somehow coming across less fully formed and three-dimensional than their nearly speechless inspirations from Nintendo‘s flagship franchise.
    — Wilson Chapman, IndieWire, 31 Mar. 2026
Definition of speechless
Adjective
  • Days before the openings, the prospect of showing across his hometown still seemed to Hodges about as incomprehensible as a dream.
    — Tara Anne Dalbow, Los Angeles Times, 21 Oct. 2026
  • Stanton’s confession ends up being incomprehensible to anyone but himself—an irony that McCarthy, with his partiality for secret codes, seems to take great pleasure in.
    — Max Callimanopulos, New Yorker, 14 Oct. 2026
Definition of incomprehensible
Adjective
  • The cloud was blank and inarticulate, a monolith with no secrets to reveal to any of its human witnesses.
    — Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 11 Sep. 2026
  • Just as between them William James and Michael Oakeshott told us that there is no such thing as unmediated experience, so, surely, there is no such thing as inarticulate thought.
    — Richard Lansdown, The New York Review of Books, 25 June 2026
Definition of inarticulate
Adjective
  • Even though it was trained using 18 million trillion calculations, GPT 1 responds with an incoherent back-and-forth dialogue.
    — New York Times, New York Times, 15 Oct. 2026
  • Tyson is at once scary, funny, personable, distasteful, introspective, superficial, articulate and incoherent.
    — Daniel Fienberg, HollywoodReporter, 13 Oct. 2026
Definition of incoherent
Adjective
  • Star winger Lionel Messi, the MLS leader in assists and goals, was rather silent against Cincinnati, finishing with zero shots on target and a yellow card.
    — Miami Herald, Miami Herald, 29 Oct. 2026
  • There’s also a traveling circus, a silent film theater, The Speakeasy and a look inside the Dundee Daily News.
    — Gloria Casas, Chicago Tribune, 27 Oct. 2026
Definition of silent

Browse Nearby Words

tongues
tongue-tied
tonic
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Tongue-tied.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/tongue-tied. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

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