tongue-work

English

Noun

tongue-work (uncountable)

1. (archaic) Babble, chatter; conversation.
   • 1857, George Borrow, Romany Rye:

     I wonder whether you and he have had any tongue-work already.

   • 1866, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XX, in Felix Holt, the Radical […], volume II, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, page 78:

     If a man takes to tongue-work it's all over with him. 'Everything's wrong,' says he. That's a big text. But does he want to make everything right? Not he. He'd lose his text.