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language
- Main Entry:
- lan·guage
- Pronunciation:
-
\ˈlaŋ-gwij, -wij\
- Function:
- noun
- Etymology:
- Middle English, from Anglo-French langage, from lange, langue tongue, language, from Latin lingua — more at tongue
- Date:
- 14th century
1 a: the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community b (1): audible, articulate, meaningful sound as produced by the action of the vocal organs (2): a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings (3): the suggestion by objects, actions, or conditions of associated ideas or feelings <language in their very gesture — Shakespeare> (4): the means by which animals communicate (5): a formal system of signs and symbols (as FORTRAN or a calculus in logic) including rules for the formation and transformation of admissible expressions (6): machine language 12 a: form or manner of verbal expression; specifically : style b: the vocabulary and phraseology belonging to an art or a department of knowledge c: profanity3: the study of language especially as a school subject4: specific words especially in a law or regulation
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