Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The everyday language spoken by a people as distinguished from the literary language.
- noun A variety of such everyday language specific to a social group or region.
- noun The specialized vocabulary of a particular trade, profession, or group.
- noun The common, nonscientific name of a plant or animal.
- adjective Native to or commonly spoken by the members of a particular country or region.
- adjective Using the native language of a region, especially as distinct from the literary language.
- adjective Relating to or expressed in the native language or dialect.
- adjective Of or being an indigenous building style using local materials and traditional methods of construction and ornament, especially as distinguished from academic or historical architectural styles.
- adjective Occurring or existing in a particular locality; endemic.
- adjective Relating to or designating the common, nonscientific name of a biological species.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Native; indigenous; belonging to the country of one's birth; belonging to the speech that one naturally acquires: as, English is our vernacular language. The word is always, or almost always, used of the native language or ordinary idiom of a place.
- Hence, specifically, characteristic of a locality: as, vernacular architecture.
- noun One's mother-tongue; the native idiom of a place; by extension, the language of a particular calling.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Belonging to the country of one's birth; one's own by birth or nature; native; indigenous; -- now used chiefly of language.
- noun The vernacular language; one's mother tongue; often, the common forms of expression in a particular locality, opposed to
literary orlearned forms.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The
language of a people, anational language. - noun
Everyday speech , includingcolloquialisms , as opposed toliterary orliturgical language. - noun Language
unique to a particulargroup of people;jargon ,argot . - noun Roman Catholicism, uncountable The
indigenous language of a people, into which the words of theMass are translated. - adjective Of or pertaining to
everyday language .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a characteristic language of a particular group (as among thieves)
- adjective being or characteristic of or appropriate to everyday language
- noun the everyday speech of the people (as distinguished from literary language)
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The next question intends to look at the respondents own private position on the question of whether the option to do the liturgical readings directly in the vernacular is a good or a bad thing.
Results on the Poll on the Language of the Readings in the Usus Antiquior 2009
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For the Yankee vernacular is dying out of New England.
The Yankee Myth 2010
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They know about their vaginas and all the rest, but our vernacular is vulva.
The V-Word aka TBTAM 2009
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So he has a certain vernacular, and a certain way he needs to talk right now, Nagin said.
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Further, African American vernacular is * not* only spoken by an urban underclass, and suggesting it is is insulting.
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I think the vernacular is DRAMA QUEEN, showing up in a media hangout wearing red?!?
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Ahhh, Yoda … his voice & vernacular is timeless … Thanks to Frank Oz. – Godspeed –
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The oral exams have already accomplished what they were supposed to -- I have a dissertation topic, even if to date my favorite way to express is "Time does weird things in vernacular texts dealing with the" English "nation in the periods immediately pre - and post-conquest."
Archive 2007-08-01 Mary Kate Hurley 2007
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The oral exams have already accomplished what they were supposed to -- I have a dissertation topic, even if to date my favorite way to express is "Time does weird things in vernacular texts dealing with the" English "nation in the periods immediately pre - and post-conquest."
I am a leaf on the wind... Mary Kate Hurley 2007
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By those days, they were comprised mostly of the lower class and emotionally disturbed, white trash in Southern vernacular, and led by middling merchants or farmers that were a little smarter than the rest.
uselessness commented on the word vernacular
Employ the vernacular.
January 25, 2007
oroboros commented on the word vernacular
Nonstandard speech v. standard speech.
May 24, 2008
dbekeny commented on the word vernacular
PROFESSOR
Better get under cover, Sylvester --
there's a storm blowing up -- a whopper, to
speak in the vernacular of the peasantry.
Poor little kid -- I hope she gets home all
right.
June 11, 2010