honey-tongued
English
Adjective
honey-tongued (comparative more honey-tongued, superlative most honey-tongued)
- Sweet-speaking; persuasive; seductive.
- c. 1594, William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V, Scene 2,[1]
- This is the flower that smiles on every one,
- To show his teeth as white as whale’s bone;
- And consciences, that will not die in debt,
- Pay him the due of honey-tongued Boyet.
- 1612, Thomas Heywood, An Apology for Actors, London: Nicholas Okes, “First touching their Antiquity,”[2]
- In Iulius Cæsars time […] the famous hony-tong’d Orator Cicero florished; who, amongst many other his eloquent Orations, writ certaine yet extant […]
- 1634, Francis Meres, “A comparatiue discourse of our English Poets, with the Greeke, Latine, and Italian Poets” in Wits Common Wealth, The Second Part, London: William Stansby, p. 623,[3]
- As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to liue in Pythagorus: so the sweete wittie soule of Ouid liues in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnesse his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his priuate friends, &c.
- 1826, Mary Shelley, The Last Man, London: Henry Colburn, Volume I, Chapter , pp. 72-73,[4]
- Among his other advantages, Lord Raymond was supremely handsome; every one admired him; of women he was the idol. He was courteous, honey-tongued—an adept in fascinating arts.
- 1955, C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, London: Geoffrey Bles, Chapter 7, p. 109,[5]
- He was a grey-head with large spectacles and a wide mouth which combined to give him a froglike expression, but nothing could be less froglike than his voice. He was honey-tongued. Every verse he read turned into music on his lips: something midway between speech and song.
- c. 1594, William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V, Scene 2,[1]