language

language

noun

Definition of LANGUAGE

1

the stock of words, pronunciation, and grammar used by a people as their basic means of communication <Great Britain, the United States, Australia, and other countries where English is the dominant language>

Synonyms lingo, mother tongue, speech, tongue, vocabulary

Related Words acrolect; argot, cant, colloquial, dialect, idiolect, idiom, jargon, parlance, patois, patter, pidgin, slang, slanguage, vernacular; colloquialism, localism, provincialism, regionalism, shibboleth, vernacularism; terminology; coinage, modernism, neologism

2

the special terms or expressions of a particular group or field <“love” means “nothing” in the language of tennis>

Synonyms argot, cant, dialect, jargon, jive, language, lingo, patois, patter, shop, shoptalk, slang, vocabulary

Related Words colloquial, colloquialism, idiom, localism, parlance, pidgin, provincialism, regionalism, speech, vernacular, vernacularism; slanguage; bureaucratese, computerese, cyberspeak, educationese, governmentese, journalese, technobabble

3

the way in which something is put into words <we're finding the language of the legal documents to be tough going>

Synonyms diction, language, phraseology, phrasing, verbiage

Related Words expression, formulation, locution; enunciation, phrase, speech, style, utterance, voice