tonguing

Pluraltonguings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of tongue.

   The trumpeter kept tonguing the same phrase until it sounded clean.

   Skilled players vary their tonguing depending on the articulation a passage demands.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every use of the verb: a wind player starting a note with a tap of the tongue, a carpenter joining boards by tongue and groove, and narrow strips that jut out. The final e of tongue drops before the suffix. One use is vulgar slang for licking during sex, so musicians' talk of tonguing a phrase reads most safely with the instrument in view. The obsolete sense 'to prate' has faded entirely.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A licking or lapping motion made with the tongue.

   Like the repeated lapping a cat makes when grooming its fur.

   The cat's patient tonguing smoothed every hair back into place.

   A steady tonguing of the salt block wore a shallow groove into its surface.

   Similarlicking, lapping

   Note

   It can be counted as well as massed. The Ultimate Sex Book (1992) speaks of "introductory tonguings", treating each lick as a separate act. That erotic setting sits close to the vulgar slang use of the verb. In neutral writing, keep the mass noun and a clearly animal or physical context, such as a cat's grooming, to avoid an unintended reading.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A technique on wind instruments in which the player uses the tongue against the reed or mouthpiece to articulate separate notes.

   The clarinet teacher worked on tonguing for the entire lesson.

   Rapid tonguing gave the passage its bright, detached sound.

   Similararticulation

   Oppositeslurring

   Note

   A wind player's term for how a note begins. The tongue releases the air as though shaping a "t" or "d", giving each note a clean, separate start. Teachers treat it as a skill to drill ("work on tonguing"), and it takes adjectives of speed and character: rapid, light, crisp. As a countable noun it names a particular pattern, so players speak of choosing different tonguings for a passage.

4. 4
   nounhistoricaluncountable

   The cutting away of strips of blubber during the butchering of a whale.

   The tonguing went on for hours as the men sliced the blubber into long strips.

   During the tonguing, blubber was peeled from the carcass in great sheets.

   Note

   A whaling term that now belongs to history writing. Martin Gibbs's The Shore Whalers of Western Australia (2010) describes a "tonguing party": a crew that salvaged blubber from carcasses left behind by pelagic whaling ships. Used today, it fits accounts of the old whaling trade, not modern butchery, and it usually needs a phrase of context so readers do not hear the musical sense.

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