mother tongue

noun

1

: one's native language

2

: a language from which another language derives

Synonyms

• language
• lingo
• speech
• tongue
• vocabulary

Examples of mother tongue in a Sentence

although the anthropologist could speak the local language fairly well, she was always glad to find someone who shared her mother tongue

Recent Examples on the Web

This suggested, startlingly, that birds could learn a literal mother tongue while still in ovo. —Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker, 14 Oct. 2024

The font on the album cover is a play on the Geʽez script used in Amharic, her mother tongue. —Mankaprr Conteh, Rolling Stone, 20 Sep. 2024

Who among us doesn’t feel — either occasionally or always — like social codes are a chaotic second language that other people were born speaking like a mother tongue? —David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 10 Sep. 2024

And when this Medellín native greets me in his mother tongue, the melody of his voice is nearly as tender as his ballads. —Patricia Alfonso Tortolani, Allure, 23 July 2024

Word History

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Kids Definition

mother tongue

noun

1

: one's native language

2

: a language from which another language develops