Definition - a word, phrase, or sentence difficult to articulate because of a succession of similar consonantal sounds (as in "twin-screw steel cruiser")
Have you ever found yourself unable to sleep, counting sheep and pondering the question ‘what kind of tongue-twisters did they use in the days of yore’? No? Good for you! And now you'll never have to. The tongue twister has been around for over 150 years; although it was first used to describe single words (or names) that were hard to pronounce it did not take long for people to come up with sentences which were intentionally problematic. A Tennessee newspaper article from 1872 titled Normal School Exercises in Articulation gave a number of examples of what it called “tongue-twisters”:
”Robert Rowley rolled a round roll round: a round roll Robert Rowley rolled round. Where rolled the round roll Robert Rowley rolled round?”’
”Theophilus Thistle, the successful thistle-sifter, in sifting a sieveful of thistles, thurst three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb.”
”Thou wreath’d’st and muzzl’d’st the far-fetch’d ox, and imprisoned him in the volcanic Mexican mountain of Pop-o-cat-apet-l in Co-to-pax-i.”
—Nashville Union and American (Nashville, TN), 15 Mar. 1872