find one's tongue | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic)To speak after beingunableto do so or after remainingsilent; to find something to say.The templateTemplate:RQ:Jonson Epicoenedoes not use the parameter(s):url=http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A04632.0001.001Please seeModule:checkparamsfor help with this warning.1609December (first performance), Beniamin Ionson [i.e.,Ben Jonson], “Epicoene, or The Silent Woman. A Comœdie.[…]”, inThe Workes of Beniamin Ionson(First Folio), London:[…]Will[iam]Stansby, published1616,→OCLC, Act III, scene vi,page562:HAVGHTY. Is this the silent woman?CENTAVRE. Nay, shee hasfound her tonguesince shee was married, master TRVE-WITsayes.1749,Henry Fielding, chapter 5, inThe History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume(please specify |volume=I to VI), London:A[ndrew]Millar,[…],→OCLC, book V,page225:Jones,tho’ perhaps, the most astonished of the three, firstfound his Tongue; and[…]he burst into a loud Laughter[…]1900December –1901August,H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “chapter 8”, inThe First Men in the Moon, London:George Newnes,[…], published1901,→OCLC,page87:But I did not answer at once. I stared incredulous. For an instant I could not believe my eyes. I gave an inarticulate cry. I gripped his arm. I pointed. “Look!” I cried,finding my tongue. “There! Yes! And there!”2000,Zadie Smith,White Teeth, London: Hamish Hamilton,→ISBN,page300:Joyce knew things were going badly, but she couldn’tfind her tongueto smooth it out. A million dangerous double entendres were sitting at the back of her throat, and, if she opened her mouth even a slit (!), she feared one of them was going to come out.

Examples:

No examples available.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).