many-tongued

comparative more many-tongued · superlative most many-tongued

1. Having many tongues.
2. Represented by multiple languages; multilingual.

   The many-tongued inhabitants have the many-tongued Book; and―glad thought―it speaks one great saving truth to all; […]

   1884, William Keddie, editor, The Sabbath school magazine

   5 more examples

   In India he is popularly called "the many-tongued man of Lahore," on account of his ability to preach in nine or ten different languages.

   1888, Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine, volume 23, page 154

   Universal humanity bows before the throne of Omniscient sympathy, of Omnipresent beneficence, of Omnipotent goodness Many named by the many-tongued inhabitants of earth, […]

   1890, G. Whitfield Ray, The Masonic Review, volume 7, page 12

   The Buenos Ayres of 1889 was a strange place, with its long, narrow streets, its peculiar stores and many-tongued inhabitants.

   1915, George Whitfield Ray, Through Five Republics on Horseback, page 21

   Though each singer speaks a different language, a harmony results, rather than fracture and fragmentation. This harmony signifies not only survival, but love—indeed that it must be love that enables survival against such odds. Phillips's most resonant evocation of this idea occurs as the final section of his 1993 novel, Crossing the River, where he describes this singing as “the many-tongued chorus of the common memory”.

   2005, Wendy W. Walters, At Home In Diaspora: Black International Writing, page 119

   The association was secretly a subversive society for it palimpsested onto the 'English-speaking' British Empire the federation of many-tongued nations meeting in Esperanto, resisting an Anglo-Saxon linguistic imperialism which sought to colonize other languages.

   2009, Janet Wilson, Cristina Sandru, Sarah Lawson Welsh, Re-Routing the Postcolonial, page 53