on the tip of one's tongue

English

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 barr do theanga, ar barr 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
• 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