language
Part of speech: noun
intj
Morphological type: simple
Topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
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
Vulgar Latin -ātus
Proto-Indo-European *-ikos
Proto-Italic *-ikos
Vulgar Latin -icus
Vulgar Latin -āticus
Vulgar 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.
Inflected forms:
form: languages
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
tags: countable
examples: The English and German languages are both members of the West Germanic language family.
Deaf and mute people communicate using sign language.
He appears, and gives his advice, accompanied by a stone, which, by being put into the mouth, endows its possessor with the gift of all languages.
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.
No language could express his rage and despair.
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.
Many of us have entertained the idea of expanding our horizons. Learning a foreign language is an obvious option.
It’s one that I would personally endorse: My individual circumstances were such that, by the age of 12, I could speak German, Greek and English, so languages became my passion and my hobby.
Muksin specifically mentioned 11 extinct indigenous languages, such as Tandia and Mawes in West Papua and Papua, along with Kajeli, Piru, Moksela, Palumata, Ternateno, Hukumina, Hoti, Serua, and Nila in different areas of Maluku.
gloss: The ability to communicate using words.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
examples: the gift of language
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.
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.
gloss: A sublanguage: the slang of a particular community or jargon of a particular specialist field.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
examples: legal language; the language of chemistry
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.
And ‘blubbing’ . . . Blubbing went out with ‘decent’ and ‘ripping’. Mind you, not a bad new language to start up. 1920s schoolboy slang could be due for a revival.
gloss: The specific wording or style of a text, such as a law or a contract.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
examples: 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.
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.
Massachusetts often claims to be a right-to-shelter state because, on the books, it provides homeless families access to emergency shelter, free of cost. This was the purpose for which the right-to-shelter law was crafted. The language of the law, however, could not be further from the truth.
gloss: The expression of thought (the communication of meaning) in a specified way; that which communicates something, as language does.
pos: noun
tags: countable
figuratively
uncountable
examples: body language; the language of the eyes
A tale about themselves [is] told by people with help from the universal languages of their eyes, their hands, and even their shirting feet.
Birding had become like that for me. It is a language that, once learnt, I have been unable to unlearn.
gloss: A body of sounds, signs or signals by which animals communicate, and by which plants are sometimes also thought to communicate.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: 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.
Prairie dogs use their language to refer to real dangers in the real world, so it definitely has meaning.
gloss: A computer language; a machine language.
pos: noun
tags: countable
examples: In fact pointers are called references in these languages to distinguish them from pointers in languages like C and C++.
gloss: A manner of expression.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
examples: Their language simple, as their manners meek, […]
gloss: The particular words used in a speech or a passage of text.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
examples: The language used in the law does not permit any other interpretation.
The language he used to talk to me was obscene.
gloss: Profanity.
pos: noun
tags: euphemistic
uncountable
examples: "Where the hell is Horace?" ¶ "There he is. He's coming. You shouldn't use language."
gloss: An admonishment said in response to someone using vulgar language during a conversation.
pos: intj
examples: Nancy: So... me and Barbara are gonna study at her house tonight. That's cool, right? / Karen: No, not cool. / Nancy: What? Why not? / Karen: Why do you think? Am I speaking Chinese in this house? Until we know Will is okay, no one leaves. / Nancy: This is such bullshit. / Ted: Language. / Nancy: So we're under house arrest? Just because Mike's friend got lost on the way home from... / Mike: Wait, this is Will's fault? / Karen: Nancy, take that back. / Nancy: No! / Mike: You're just pissed off 'cause you wanna hang out with Steve. / Ted: Steve? / Karen: Who's Steve? / Mike: Her new boyfriend. / Nancy: You are such a douchebag, Mike! / Ted: Language!
Synonyms: computer language
programming language
machine language
language
leid
lingo
speech
tongue
Related words: langue
lingua
lingua franca
linguine
tonguage
linguistics
languoid
Translations: