The flap beneath a shoe's laces or other fastening, covering the top of the foot.
The tongue sits under the laces and pads the top of the foot. It joins the top of the vamp at the base of the eyestay, and its build follows the style, from a single layer of leather to 1 inch of polyurethane foam. On an Oxford it is a separate piece of leather, stitched underneath the quarters, vamp and facing. It is not always separate: Crockett & Jones describes its monk straps as having a whole-cut vamp and tongue, and on an Albert slipper the vamp itself extends up the instep to form the tongue.
Some boots have a bellows tongue, cut from a single piece of leather that crosses the bridge of the foot and sewn into either side of the boot down its whole length, so that water cannot soak through the laces into the socks.
In job listings
The shoe part is not named in current listings; the word appears there in language requirements, as in “mother tongue”. The nearest roles are in shoe upper production, where cut pieces are lined and stitched into uppers. See current shoe upper roles.
