Nation in 1829). According to one 1859 account, the native proverb that the "white man spoke with a forked tongue" originated as a result of the French tactic of the 1690s, in their war with the Iroquois, of inviting their enemies to attend a peace conference, only to be slaughtered or captured. Literary usage There are appearances of the phrase "forked tongue" in English literature, either in reference to actual snakes' tongues, or as a metaphor for untruthfulness, such as a sermon by Lancelot Andrewes, who died in 1626: "And he hath the art of cleaving. He shewed it in the beginning, when he made the Serpent, linguam bisulcam, a forked tongue, to speake that, which was contrarie to his knowledge and meaning, They should not die; and as he did the Serpent's, so he can doe others." The phrase also appears in Milton's Paradise Lost: According to his Doom: He would have spoke, But Hiss for Hiss return'd with forked Tongue To forked Tongue, for now were all transform'd... See also Ankyloglossia Dicroglossidae, family of frogs commonly called the fork-tongued frogs Doublespeak Silver tongue (disambiguation) Tongue splitting (a surgical procedure) References Deception Sensory organs in animals Tongue