on the tip of one's tongue

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

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Prepositional phrase

on the tip of one's tongue

1. Known but not quite able to be recalled.

   Her name is on the tip of my tongue: it's Kathy, or Karen, or something.

   • 2001, Daniel L. Schacter, The Seven Sins of Memory, How the Mind Forgets and Remembers, Houghton Mifflin, →ISBN:

     The feeling that a blocked word or name is on the tip of the tongue appears to be a near-universal experience. The cognitive psychologist Bennett Schwarz surveyed speakers of fifty-one different languages and found that forty-five of them contain expressions using "the tongue" to describe situations […]

Translations

known but not quite remembered

• Catalan: a la punta de la llengua f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 一時想不起來／一时想不起来 (yīshí xiǎng bù qǐlai)

• Dutch: op het puntje van zijn tong
• Esperanto: sur la pinto de la lango
• Estonian: please add this translation if you can
• Finnish: kielen päällä
• French: sur le bout de la langue (fr)
• Galician: na punta da lingua
• Georgian: ენაზე მოადგება (enaze moadgeba)
• German: auf der Zunge liegen
• Greek: στην άκρη της γλώσσας (stin ákri tis glóssas)
• Hungarian: a nyelve hegyén
• Irish: ar bharr do theanga, ar bharr do ghoib
• Italian: sulla punta della lingua
• Khmer: នៅចុងៗមាត់ (nŏuchŏngchŏngméat)
• Korean: please add this translation if you can
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: ha det på tungen (no), ha noe på tungen

• Persian: دانستن چیزی ولی فراموشی موقتی آن
• Polish: na końcu języka
• Portuguese: estar na ponta da língua (literally “to be on the tip of one’s tongue”)
• Romanian: pe limbă
• Russian: на ко́нчике языка́ (ru) (na kónčike jazyká), на языке́ ве́ртится (na jazyké vértitsja, literally “turns on [my] tongue”), крутиться на языке (krutitʹsja na jazyke)
• Scottish Gaelic: air bàrr teangaidh
• Spanish: en la punta de la lengua
• Swedish: ha något på tungan, ha något i bakhuvudet
• Turkish: dilin ucunda olmak
• Ukrainian: на кінчику язика (na kinčyku jazyka)
• Walloon: l' awè sol betchete del linwe (wa), l' awè sol dibout del linwe (wa)
• Yiddish: אויף שפּיץ צונג (oyf shpits tsung)

See also

• TOT
• lethologica
• presque vu

Further reading

• tip of the tongue on Wikipedia.Wikipedia