many-tongued

English

Etymology

From many +‎ tongued.

Adjective

many-tongued (comparative more many-tongued, superlative most many-tongued)

1. Having many tongues.
2. Represented by multiple languages; multilingual.
   • 1884, William Keddie, editor, The Sabbath school magazine:

     The many-tongued inhabitants have the many-tongued Book; and―glad thought―it speaks one great saving truth to all; […]

   • 1888, Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine, volume 23, page 154:

     In India he is popularly called "the many-tongued man of Lahore," on account of his ability to preach in nine or ten different languages.

   • 1890, G. Whitfield Ray, The Masonic Review, volume 7, page 12:

     Universal humanity bows before the throne of Omniscient sympathy, of Omnipresent beneficence, of Omnipotent goodness Many named by the many-tongued inhabitants of earth, […]

   • 1915, George Whitfield Ray, Through Five Republics on Horseback, page 21:

     The Buenos Ayres of 1889 was a strange place, with its long, narrow streets, its peculiar stores and many-tongued inhabitants.

   • 2005, Wendy W. Walters, At Home In Diaspora: Black International Writing, page 119:

     Though each singer speaks a different language, a harmony results, rather than fracture and fragmentation. This harmony signifies not only survival, but love—indeed that it must be love that enables survival against such odds. Phillips's most resonant evocation of this idea occurs as the final section of his 1993 novel, Crossing the River, where he describes this singing as “the many-tongued chorus of the common memory”.

   • 2009, Janet Wilson, Cristina Sandru, Sarah Lawson Welsh, Re-Routing the Postcolonial, page 53:

     The association was secretly a subversive society for it palimpsested onto the 'English-speaking' British Empire the federation of many-tongued nations meeting in Esperanto, resisting an Anglo-Saxon linguistic imperialism which sought to colonize other languages.

   • 2021, Johanna Chovanec, Olof Heilo, Narrated Empires:

     In the fourth part of this volume, 'Habsburg Press(ure): Reading Between the Lines of a Many-Tongued Journalism', the Habsburg Empire takes centre stage.

   • 2022, Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, Omar Khayyam’s Secret, page 472:

     Lilies can be a many-tongued person that remains silent.

   • 2022, Martin Luther, John Acton, The Collected Works of Martin Luther:

     "Reading Luther" in German, Swedish, Norwegian and English will bring better results to old and young than if read only in one language. The Church of the Reformation is not one-tongued, but many-tongued.