The Body

Tongue tie

Also called tongue-tie, tongue ties, tongue-tied, TT, ankyloglossia

Tongue tie is when the strip of skin joining a baby's tongue to the floor of the mouth is shorter or tighter than usual. It's the everyday name for ankyloglossia, and parents often shorten it to TT and talk about having it snipped.

How it's said

  • My LO is booked in next week to get her tongue tie snipped.
  • All three of mine had tongue ties, but we only had the procedure with two as I felt it wasn't necessary with the third.
  • We had my LO's TT cut three times and it grew back even with the exercises.

Who says it

  • Parents
  • Parents on forums
  • Lactation consultants
  • Midwives
  • Health visitors
  • Doctors

Where it came from

Tongue tie is the plain English for ankyloglossia, a medical word borrowed from Ancient Greek. Tongue-tied has also meant lost for words since at least the 1500s, and Shakespeare wrote of his tongue-tied Muse in Sonnet 85, printed in 1609.

Cutting a tied tongue goes back to Greek medicine. A 2010 history in the journal Neonatology says that in the Middle Ages midwives used their nails to free the tongue while surgeons used instruments, and that over the last century the reason given for the cut shifted from speech to feeding.

Related words

Sources