Word: language Part of Speech: noun Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s Proto-Italic *dn̥ɣwā Latin dingua Latin lingua Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂tos Proto-Italic *-ātos Latin -ātus Proto-Indo-European *-ikos Proto-Italic *-ikos Latin -icus Latin -āticus Latin -āticum Vulgar Latin *linguāticum Old French languagebor. Middle English langage English language 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”). Doublet of langaj. Displaced native Old English ġeþēode. Pronunciation: /ˈlæŋ.ɡwɪd͡ʒ/, /ˈleɪ̯ŋ.ɡwɪd͡ʒ/, /ˈlɛ̃ŋ.ɡwɪd͡ʒ/, /ˈlɛŋ.ɡwɘd͡ʒ/, /ˈlæŋɡ.weːd͡ʒ/ 1. 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. Labels: countable Example: The English and German languages are both members of the West Germanic language family. Example: Deaf and mute people communicate using sign language. 2. The ability to communicate using words. Labels: uncountable Example: the gift of language Example: It is wholly out of the power of language to convey any idea of the blissful enjoyment of obtaining water, after an almost total want of it, during eight and forty hours, in the scorching regions of an Arabian desert, in the month of July. 3. A sublanguage: the slang of a particular community or jargon of a particular specialist field. Labels: uncountable Example: legal language; the language of chemistry Example: 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. 4. The specific wording or style of a text, such as a law or a contract. Labels: uncountable Example: Technological advances are notorious for exposing the open-endedness of the language in our laws, even when we thought our definitions were airtight. Lawmakers can’t anticipate everything. Indeed, you could make the case that the whole area of patent law just is the problem of deciding whether some new technology should fall within the range of the language of the patent. Example: A Superior Court judge Tuesday let stand an arbitrator’s ruling that the city was allowed to pass onto its firefighters increased pension and retirement benefit costs due to changes in the state pension system. The city firefighters' union had gone to court seeking to overturn the arbitrator’s 2015 decision, claiming he’d misinterpreted the language in the contract. In his 17-page decision, Superior Court Justice Joseph Montalbano noted that by law the union had to do more than just have a good argument. 5. The expression of thought (the communication of meaning) in a specified way; that which communicates something, as language does. Labels: countable, figuratively, uncountable Example: body language; the language of the eyes Example: A tale about themselves [is] told by people with help from the universal languages of their eyes, their hands, and even their shirting feet. 6. A body of sounds, signs or signals by which animals communicate, and by which plants are sometimes also thought to communicate. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: 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. Example: Prairie dogs use their language to refer to real dangers in the real world, so it definitely has meaning. 7. A computer language; a machine language. Labels: countable Example: In fact pointers are called references in these languages to distinguish them from pointers in languages like C and C++. 8. A manner of expression. Labels: uncountable Example: Their language simple, as their manners meek, […] 9. The particular words used in a speech or a passage of text. Labels: uncountable Example: The language used in the law does not permit any other interpretation. Example: The language he used to talk to me was obscene. 10. Profanity. Labels: euphemistic, uncountable Example: "Where the hell is Horace?" ¶ "There he is. He's coming. You shouldn't use language."