bite one's tongue
"bite-one-s-tongue" is a 14-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“bite one's tongue” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 17
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - To resist the urge to speak out, especially in order to avoid saying something inappropriate or likely to cause a dispute.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bite one's tongue |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 17 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “bite one's tongue” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
bite one's tongue is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To resist the urge to speak out, especially in order to avoid saying something inappropriate or likely to cause a dispute.".
bite one's tongue has no tracked misspelling variants, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is bite one's tongue, spelled B-I-T-E- -O-N-E-'-S- -T-O-N-G-U-E.
Definition
- 1To resist the urge to speak out, especially in order to avoid saying something inappropriate or likely to cause a dispute.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “bite one's tongue”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-I-T-E- -O-N-E-'-S- -T-O-N-G-U-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.