the.com/forked tongue
a snake's stereo nose, sniffing the world in surround sound and stereo direction.
means A literally split or divided tongue, as in snakes — but as an idiom, it means speaking deceitfully, saying one thing while meaning another.
from The phrase combines Old English 'forca' (a fork, ultimately from Latin 'furca,' a two-pronged tool) with 'tongue,' from Old English 'tunge.' The deceit-meaning is famously tied to a phrase — 'to speak with a forked tongue' — long attributed to Native American descriptions of dishonest treaty-makers in 19th-century American usage. The underlying image is older and simpler: the serpent's split tongue, an animal long cast as the archetype of treachery (think Eden), so a 'forked tongue' became shorthand for words that point two ways at once.
- smell in 3d
- each fork tip samples a different patch of air
- brain wiring
- two prongs feed two olfactory channels separately
- not for venom
- it carries scent, never poison or stings
- lizards too
- monitors and some skinks share the split design
- idiom origin
- native warnings about double-talk gave it deceit's meaning
pit vipers — snakes with forked tongues that use them to collect scent particles for the vomeronasal organ
garter snakes — north american snakes with forked tongues that flick in and out to sense their environment
monitor lizards — large lizards like the komodo dragon that use forked tongues to detect prey scents