tongs

UK/tɒŋz/US/tɔŋz/

nounB1+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,215 of 15,258leans spoken

Tongs are metal pincers you grip hot food with instead of your fingers. A pair of tongs, kitchen tongs, salad tongs.

They are a plural-only noun like scissors and trousers, so it is a pair of tongs and never a tong. A blacksmith's tongs hold iron in the fire, and curling tongs heat hair. The two arms work as a lever, which is why tongs grip harder than fingers can.

Definitions of tongs

1nountongsMetal pincers for gripping hot things.B1+
“Use tongs to turn the sausages on the barbecue.”
- Said"Use the tongs; you'll burn your fingers on those sausages."
- WrittenThe tongs snapped shut on nothing, again, while the steak burned.
- UsedTurn the chops with tongs, never with a knife, or the juice runs out.
- ContrastTongs, not a fork. A fork stabs and lets the juices out; tongs grip from both sides and leave no hole. fork →
- Not thisChopsticks are not tongs. Tongs are hinged and made for heat.
- Exchange"Tongs?""Hanging by the grill. Mind, they're hot."
- SimplyTake the tongs. Turn the chicken.
Patterna pair of tongs · pick up / turn sth with tongs · kitchen / barbecue / salad tongs

tongs is a tool.

Remember it

TONGS → two LONG metal fingers

Two long metal fingers joined at one end: squeeze them and they pick up the hot sausage without burning you.

hooks ontolong

Where it comes from

Old English tange named the tool, from a Germanic root meaning to bite. The plural has been usual for centuries.

Middle English
tonges
English, today
tongs

From Middle English tonges, equivalent to tong + -s.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen

Practise this word

tongs in the wild

There are many forms of tongs adapted to their specific use.
Tongs
Design variations include resting points so that the working end of the tongs does not come into contact with a bench surface.
Tongs
Pliers are a hand tool used to hold objects firmly, possibly developed from tongs used to handle hot metal in Bronze Age Europe.
Pliers
Tools designed for safely handling hot objects are usually called tongs.
Pliers
Tweezers are thumb-driven forceps most likely derived from tongs used to grab or hold hot objects since the dawn of recorded history.
Tweezers

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

curling tongs

Definitions of tongs

1nountongsMetal pincers for gripping hot things.B1+

“Use tongs to turn the sausages on the barbecue.”

Said"Use the tongs; you'll burn your fingers on those sausages."
WrittenThe tongs snapped shut on nothing, again, while the steak burned.
UsedTurn the chops with tongs, never with a knife, or the juice runs out.
ContrastTongs, not a fork. A fork stabs and lets the juices out; tongs grip from both sides and leave no hole. fork →
Not thisChopsticks are not tongs. Tongs are hinged and made for heat.
Exchange"Tongs?""Hanging by the grill. Mind, they're hot."
SimplyTake the tongs. Turn the chicken.

Patterna pair of tongs · pick up / turn sth with tongs · kitchen / barbecue / salad tongs

tongs is a tool.