language
English
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
From Middle English langage, language, from Old French language, from Vulgar Latin *linguāticum, from Latin lingua (“tongue, speech, language”), from Old Latin dingua (“tongue”), from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s (“tongue, speech, language”). Displaced native Old English ġeþēode.
Noun
language (countable and uncountable, plural languages)
Examples |
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The English Wiktionary uses the English language to define words from all of the world's languages.
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- (countable) A body of words, and set of methods of combining them (called a grammar), understood by a community and used as a form of communication.
- The English language and the German language are related.
- Deaf and mute people communicate using languages like ASL.
- 1867, Report on the Systems of Deaf-Mute Instruction pursued in Europe, quoted in 1983 in History of the College for the Deaf, 1857-1907 →ISBN, page 240:
- Hence the natural language of the mute is, in schools of this class, suppressed as soon and as far as possible, and its existence as a language, capable of being made the reliable and precise vehicle for the widest range of thought, is ignored.
- 1900, William Beckford, The History of the Caliph Vathek, page 50:
- No language could express his rage and despair.
- 2000, Geary Hobson, The Last of the Ofos, →ISBN, page 113:
- Mr. Darko, generally acknowledged to be the last surviving member of the Ofo Tribe, was also the last remaining speaker of the tribe's language.
- (uncountable) The ability to communicate using words.
- the gift of language
- 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 15:
- Language is the articulation of the limited to express the unlimited; it is the ultimate mystery which is the image of God, for in breaking up infinity to create finite beings, God has found a way to let the limited being yet be a reflection of His unlimited Being.
- (uncountable) A sublanguage: the slang of a particular community or jargon of a particular specialist field.
- 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC:
- Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language, he expressed the important words by an initial, a medial, or a final consonant, and made scratches for all the words between; his clerks, however, understood him very well.
- legal language; the language of chemistry
- (countable, uncountable, figurative) The expression of thought (the communication of meaning) in a specified way; that which communicates something, as language does.
- body language; the language of the eyes
- 2001, Eugene C. Kennedy, Sara C. Charles, On Becoming a Counselor, →ISBN:
- A tale about themselves [is] told by people with help from the universal languages of their eyes, their hands, and even their shirting feet.
- 2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 231:
- Birding had become like that for me. It is a language that, once learnt, I have been unable to unlearn.
- (countable, uncountable) A body of sounds, signs and/or signals by which animals communicate, and by which plants are sometimes also thought to communicate.
- 1983, The Listener, volume 110, page 14:
- A more likely hypothesis was that the attacked leaves were transmitting some airborne chemical signal to sound the alarm, rather like insects sending out warnings […] But this is the first time that a plant-to-plant language has been detected.
- 2009, Animals in Translation, page 274:
- Prairie dogs use their language to refer to real dangers in the real world, so it definitely has meaning.
- (computing, countable) A computer language; a machine language.
- 2015, Kent D. Lee, Foundations of Programming Languages, →ISBN, page 94:
- In fact pointers are called references in these languages to distinguish them from pointers in languages like C and C++.
- (uncountable) Manner of expression.
- 1782, William Cowper, Hope
- Their language simple, as their manners meek, […]
- 1782, William Cowper, Hope
- (uncountable) The particular words used in a speech or a passage of text.
- The language used in the law does not permit any other interpretation.
- The language he used to talk to me was obscene.
- (uncountable) Profanity.
- 1978, James Carroll, Mortal Friends, →ISBN, page 500:
- "Where the hell is Horace?" ¶ "There he is. He's coming. You shouldn't use language."
Synonyms
- (form of communication): see Thesaurus:language
- (vocabulary of a particular field): see Thesaurus:jargon
- (computer language): computer language, programming language, machine language
- (particular words used): see Thesaurus:wording
Hypernyms
Hyponyms
- artificial language
- auxiliary language
- bad language
- body language
- common language
- computer/computing language
- constructed language
- corpus language
- dead language
- endangered language
- engineered language
- everyday language
- experimental language
- extinct language
- foreign language
- formal language
- foul language
- global language
- hardware description language
- indigenous language
- international language
- link language
- literary language
- living language
- logical language
- machine language
- main language
- mathematical language
- meta language
- metaphorical language
- minority language
- modern language
- multi-paradigm language
- natural language
- object language
- pattern language
- philosophical language
- phonetic language
- planned language
- principal language
- private language
- programming language
- scripting language
- secular language
- sign language
- spoken language
- standard language
- subject-oriented language
- target language
- universal language
- vehicular language
- vernacular language
- working language
- world language
Derived terms
- AB language
- abstract language
- A language
- aspect-oriented language
- aspect-oriented programming language
- assembly language
- B language
- child language
- C language
- class-based language
- classical language
- clean language
- community language
- Community language
- conditional assembly language
- contact language
- context-free language
- curly-brace language
- curly-braces language
- curly-bracket language
- daughter language
- delegation language
- domain-specific language
- dynamic language
- e-language learning
- English-language
- esoteric programming language
- expressive language
- first language
- German-language
- ghost language
- good language
- heritage language
- high-level language
- home language
- imperative language
- indexing language
- interlanguage
- intermediate language
- international auxiliary language
- Iranian language
- Iranic language
- killer language
- language-agnostic
- language area
- language arts
- language assimilation
- language assistant
- language barrier
- language code
- language contact
- language continuum
- language cop
- language death
- language ecology
- language exchange
- language extinction
- language family
- language game
- language-independent
- language island
- language isolate
- language lab
- language laboratory
- language model
- language nest
- language of education
- language of flowers
- language planning
- language police
- language pollution
- language processing
- language replacement
- language school
- language shift
- language swap
- language technology
- language transfer
- languaging
- large language model
- link-language
- lip language
- liturgical language
- loaded language
- logical language
- love language
- low-level language
- macro language
- markup language
- matrix language
- mind one's language
- mini-language
- mixed language
- moon language
- mother language
- native language
- natural language processing
- natural language understanding
- null-subject language
- object-based language
- object-oriented language
- official language
- Oïl language
- pandanus language
- parent language
- people-first language
- Polish-language
- private language argument
- private language problem
- private language thesis
- pro-drop language
- proto-language
- prototype-based language
- query language
- receptive language
- reconstructed language
- regular language
- role-oriented language
- Romance language
- second language
- sleeping language
- source language
- speak someone's language
- speak the same language
- specific language impairment
- statically-typed language
- static language
- strong language
- style sheet language
- Sydney language
- symbolic language
- systems language
- Turkish-language
- unparliamentary language
- ur-language
- village sign language
- visual language
- visual programming language
- watch one's language
- Western Desert language
- whole language
- wooden language
Related terms
Translations
Verb
language (third-person singular simple present languages, present participle languaging, simple past and past participle languaged)
- (rare, now nonstandard or technical) To communicate by language; to express in language.
- 1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI):
- Others were languaged in such doubtful expressions that they have a double sense.
Interjection
language
- An admonishment said in response to vulgar language.
- You're a pile of shit!
Hey! Language!
See also
Etymology 2
Alteration of languet.
Noun
language (plural languages)
- A languet, a flat plate in or below the flue pipe of an organ.
- 1896, William Horatio Clarke, The Organist's Retrospect, →ISBN Invalid ISBN, page 79:
- A flue-pipe is one in which the air passes through the throat, or flue, which is the narrow, longitudinal aperture between the lower lip and the tongue, or language. […] The language is adjusted by slightly elevating or depressing it, […]
References
- “language”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
- language in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
- “language”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
French
Noun
language m (plural languages)
Middle English
Noun
language (plural languages)
- Alternative form of langage
Middle French
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Old French language.
Noun
language m (plural languages)
- language (style of communicating)
Related terms
Descendants
Old French
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Vulgar Latin *linguāticum, from Classical Latin lingua (“tongue, language”).
Pronunciation
- Lua error in Module:parameters at line 333: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "archaic" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. IPA(key): /lenˈɡwad͡ʒə/
- Lua error in Module:parameters at line 333: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "classical" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. IPA(key): /lanˈɡad͡ʒə/
- Lua error in Module:parameters at line 333: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "late" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. IPA(key): /lanˈɡaʒə/
Noun
language oblique singular, f (oblique plural languages, nominative singular language, nominative plural languages)
- language (style of communicating)
Related terms
Descendants
Borrowings: (some possibly from O.Occitan lenguatge instead)
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/æŋɡwɪdʒ
- Rhymes:English/æŋɡwɪdʒ/2 syllables
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Vulgar Latin
- English terms derived from Latin
- English terms derived from Old Latin
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations
- en:Computing
- English verbs
- English terms with rare senses
- English nonstandard terms
- English technical terms
- English interjections
- Pages with ISBN errors
- en:Linguistics
- French lemmas
- French nouns
- French countable nouns
- French masculine nouns
- French archaic forms
- Middle English lemmas
- Middle English nouns
- Middle French terms inherited from Old French
- Middle French terms derived from Old French
- Middle French lemmas
- Middle French nouns
- Middle French masculine nouns
- Middle French countable nouns
- Old French terms inherited from Vulgar Latin
- Old French terms derived from Vulgar Latin
- Old French terms inherited from Latin
- Old French terms derived from Latin
- Old French terms with IPA pronunciation
- Old French lemmas
- Old French nouns
- Old French feminine nouns
- fro:Languages