Meanings
- A fictional language of snakes in the Harry Potter universe.
Slither around Santa Fe's Rattlesnake Museum while practicing your parseltongue.
2007 April 3, Let's Go Inc., Let's Go Roadtripping USA: The Complete Coast-to-Coast Guide to America, 2nd edition, Macmillan, page 4963 more examples
Now I can't get this out of my head - them hissing and whispering at one another like they're speaking in parseltongue.
2005 December 1, Aisling Willow Grey, “Re: AMC -- Kendall (and Ryan too)”, in rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc (Usenet), message-ID <0001HW.BFB4D67000210837F0284550@news.verizon.net>“Parseltongue, that's what I need,” I murmured out loud as I brushed my teeth. A language for communicating with snakes.
2009 September 22, Sara Paretsky, Hardball: A V.I. Warshawski Novel, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, →OLAs mentally-overloaded as I was from his lisp, his proud/condescending tone, and his rock-solid insult, I must have blacked out, because I don't remember what happened next. I'm still toying with the possibility that he was actually a wizard speaking parseltongue.
2013 January 6, Will Rogers, “God Of War’s Descent”, in WhatCulture, archived from the original on 16 Mar 2013, retrieved 01 Feb 2013
Origin
Coined by British author and philanthropist J. K. Rowling in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998) as Parseltongue. J. K. Rowling stated that she based the term on an "old word for someone who has a problem with the mouth, like a hare lip".
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Chinese 蛇佬腔, 爬說語 /爬说语
- 蛇佬腔 (shélǎoqiāng)language of snakes in Harry Potter
- 爬說語 /爬说语language of snakes in Harry Potter
- 爬说语 (páshuōyǔ)language of snakes in Harry Potter
Dutch sisselspraak
- sisselspraaklanguage of snakes in Harry Potter
Finnish kärmeskieli
- kärmeskielilanguage of snakes in Harry Potter
French fourchelang
- fourchelanglanguage of snakes in Harry Potter
German Parsel
- Parsellanguage of snakes in Harry Potter
Italian serpentese
- serpenteselanguage of snakes in Harry Potter
Japanese パーセルマウス
- パーセルマウスlanguage of snakes in Harry Potter
Norwegian ormtunge
- ormtungelanguage of snakes in Harry Potter
Polish wężomowa
- wężomowalanguage of snakes in Harry Potter
Portuguese ofidioglossia, língua de cobra
- ofidioglossialanguage of snakes in Harry Potter
- língua de cobralanguage of snakes in Harry Potter
- serpentêslanguage of snakes in Harry Potter
Spanish pársel
- pársellanguage of snakes in Harry Potter
Swedish ormviskning
- ormviskninglanguage of snakes in Harry Potter
Cite this entry
parseltongue. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/parseltongue
“parseltongue.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/parseltongue. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “parseltongue,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/parseltongue.
Source: parseltongue on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.