Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of the vernacular and literary Indic languages recorded from the third century BC to the fourth century AD, as opposed to Sanskrit.
  • noun Any of the modern Indic languages.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The collective name of those dialects which succeed the Sanskrit in the historical development of the language of India.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Any one of the popular dialects descended from, or akin to, Sanskrit; -- in distinction from the Sanskrit, which was used as a literary and learned language when no longer spoken by the people. Pali is one of the Prakrit dialects.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun any of Middle Indo-Aryan languages, derived from dialects of Old Indo-Aryan languages

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any of the modern Indic languages
  • noun any of the vernacular Indic languages of north and central India (as distinguished from Sanskrit) recorded from the 3rd century BC to the 4th century AD

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Sanskrit prākṛtam, from neuter sing. of prākṛta-, natural, vulgar, vernacular : pra-, before, forward; see per in Indo-European roots + karoti, he makes; see Sanskrit.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Sanskrit प्राकृत (prākṛta, "unrefined, natural").

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