Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
tongue-work en · NOUN
Meanings
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(archaic, uncountable) Babble, chatter; conversation.
I wonder whether you and he have had any tongue-work already.
1857, George Borrow, Romany Rye: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.
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: