loosen someone's tongue
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English
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Audio (General Australian): (file)
Verb
[edit]loosen someone's tongue (third-person singular simple present loosens someone's tongue, present participle loosening someone's tongue, simple past and past participle loosened someone's tongue)
- (informal, idiomatic) To cause one to speak more freely; to cause one to discuss a subject that would not usually be discussed.
- 1848, Anne Brontë, chapter 24, in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall[1]:
- He made a long stay in the dining-room after dinner, and, I fear, took an unusual quantity of wine, but not enough to loosen his tongue: for when he came in and found me quietly occupied with my book, too busy to lift my head on his entrance, he merely murmured an expression of suppressed disapprobation […]
- 1896, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “Chapter 4”, in The Island of Doctor Moreau (Heinemann’s Colonial Library of Popular Fiction; 52), London: William Heinemann, →OCLC; republished as The Island of Doctor Moreau: A Possibility, New York, N.Y.: Stone & Kimball, 1896, →OCLC:
- We relapsed into silence. Presently he laughed. “There’s something in this starlight that loosens one’s tongue. I’m an ass, and yet somehow I would like to tell you.”
- 1904–1907 (date written), James Joyce, “After the Race”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, published June 1914, →OCLC:
- He admired the dexterity with which their host directed the conversation. The five young men had various tastes and their tongues had been loosened.
- 2000, Michael Chabon, chapter 11, in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay[2], New York: Random House, page 552:
- Tommy had apparently been plied with ice cream and soda pop at the police station, to loosen his tongue.
Translations
[edit]to cause (someone) to be less cautious or more free in what they say
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