*dnghū-, Proto-Indo-European root meaning "tongue."

It forms all or part of: bilingual; language; languet; lingo; lingua franca; Linguaphone; linguiform; linguine; linguist; linguistics; multilingual; sublingual; tongue; trilingual.

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Latin lingua "tongue, speech, language" (from Old Latin dingua); Old Irish tenge, Welsh tafod, Lithuanian liežuvis, Old Church Slavonic jezyku "tongue;" Old English tunge "tongue; speech."

because g- followed by some vowels in English usually has a "soft" pronunciation, a silent -u- sometimes was inserted between the g- and the vowel in Middle English to signal hardness, especially in words from French; but this was not done with many Scandinavian words where hard "g" precedes a vowel (gear, get, give, etc.). Germanic -w- generally became -gu- in words borrowed into Romance languages, but Old North French preserved the Frankish -w-, and English sometimes borrowed both forms, hence guarantee/warranty, guard/ward, etc.

"artificial or auxilliary language," 1927, from inter- + language.

"non-phonemic vocal factors in speech" (tone of voice, tempo, etc.), 1958, from para- (1) + language. Related: Paralinguistic.

"a hypothetical extinct parent language from which existing languages have descended," 1948, from proto- + language.