Definition of VERNACULAR

Examples of vernacular in a Sentence

Adjective While there are American operas galore, some of which are quite good indeed, there is no vernacular opera tradition in America—instead, we have musical comedy—and now that supertitles have become standard equipment at major American opera houses, the chances that those houses will start regularly performing foreign-language operas in English translation have dropped from slim to none. — Terry Teachout, New York Times Book Review, 9 Nov. 1997 Native crafts, the use of local materials, and vernacular buildings were considered integral to each country's heritage, and their preservation and revival became part of the movement to forge a strong national identity. — Wendy Kaplan, Antiques, October 1995 For the proliferation of rich vernacular literatures in the twelfth century secured the place of the vulgar tongues in European society, and this entrenchment of the vernacular tongues made the European peoples more conscious of being separated from each other; decreased the cosmopolitan attitudes of the European nobility; and encouraged xenophobia, which became common in the thirteenth century. — Norman F. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages, 1993 Hurricanes, fires and economic development unfortunately have caused many examples of both vernacular and more classical architecture to disappear over the years. — Suzanne Stephens, Architectural Digest, 1 Aug. 1990 the vernacular architecture of the region writes essays in a very easy-to-read, vernacular style Noun But ask baseball people about [Michael] Young, and they'll admiringly tell you that he is a "grinder," vernacular for a player who works his butt off. — Chris Ballard, Sports Illustrated, 8 May 2006 … the sources for [Cole] Porter's chromaticism and syncopation are the vernacular of black music in America. — Stephen Brown, Times Literary Supplement, 21 Jan. 2005 For Lu Xun helped revolutionize Chinese writing, tugging the written language toward the vernacular so that it was easier to learn, and he even endorsed the heresy of abandoning Chinese characters for the Roman alphabet so that literacy could spread more easily. — Amy Hempel, New York Times Book Review, 19 Aug. 1990 New Mexico is not the easiest region in the country for an architect to establish a practice in. It is not that the area is indifferent to architecture—it is more that the traditional south-western architectural vernacular is so awe-inspiring that it tends to overwhelm most efforts to create a credible personal voice. — Paul Goldberger, Architectural Digest, October 1986 What was required was a vagrant and a visionary, a man of mystic recklessness. The man who dared point the way would have to use the vernacular, and not speak but shriek. Paracelsus (1493–1541) was suspect in his day, and never lost his reputation as a charlatan. — Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers, 1983 He spoke in the vernacular of an urban teenager. phrases that occur in the common vernacular

Recent Examples on the Web: Adjective Butler’s posts were written to sound like a Hong Konger — in vernacular Cantonese with the traditional Chinese characters widely used in Hong Kong. — Jeff Kao, ProPublica, "How China Built a Twitter Propaganda Machine Then Let It Loose on Coronavirus," 29 Mar. 2020 Seaweed is the vernacular word for the largest kinds of algae, known as macroalgae. — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, "Seaweed: The New Ethanol?," 16 Mar. 2020 And there was also a pertinent aesthetic bias: The reigning modernist idiom was streamlined and clean, inhospitable to vernacular grit. — Joseph Horowitz, WSJ, "A Symphony to Link Africa and America," 7 Feb. 2020 Indeed, the spark for nationalist movements has often been historians, writers, lexicographers, and folklorists who celebrated and promoted vernacular languages and excavated a glorious literary past. — Rich Lowry, National Review, "Yes, the English Language Is Important," 10 Nov. 2019 The Housing Lark celebrates West Indian vernacular cultures in all their multiple manifestations, from language to food, music, religion, nicknames, history, and ultimately to vernacular forms of knowledge. — Dohra Ahmad, The New York Review of Books, "A Lark in West Indian London," 10 Jan. 2020 Still the commitment to a vernacular aesthetic rather than to factual information. — Luke Mogelson, The New Yorker, "“Relentless Absurdity”: An Army Photographer’s Censored Images," 19 Jan. 2020 Even beyond the innovative choice of omniscient vernacular narrator, this is a novel in love with West Indian Vernacular English (WIVE). — Dohra Ahmad, The New York Review of Books, "A Lark in West Indian London," 10 Jan. 2020 Selvon’s novels are extremely rare in their choice to bestow narrative authority—in other words, objective knowledge—on a vernacular narrator. — Dohra Ahmad, The New York Review of Books, "A Lark in West Indian London," 10 Jan. 2020 Recent Examples on the Web: Noun Of course, loneliness is in our vernacular, as are solitude and isolation. — Sarah Fay, Longreads, "On Solitude (and Isolation and Loneliness [and Brackets])," 17 Mar. 2020 Niccolò was unique for his time in describing the journey in the vernacular, giving a new first-person perspective rather than relying on classic Latin descriptions. — Theresa Machemer, Smithsonian Magazine, "14th-Century Illustration of Venice Is the Oldest Found Yet," 10 Jan. 2020 As the league wrestled with the issue, a team of Washington Post journalists examined the history of this singular American word, its spread through popular culture and its place in the vernacular today. — Washington Post Staff, Washington Post, "Understanding racism and inequality in America," 8 June 2020 In today’s vernacular, Ogle pivoted the company into making digital signs for movie theaters and big-box retailers like Target and Walmart. — Dallas News, "Vanessa Ogle went into creative overdrive when pandemic threatened her hotel tech company," 7 June 2020 This work entails tuning in to the audience’s vernacular. — Anne Quito, Quartz at Work, "The sophisticated design behind a simple coronavirus sign," 3 June 2020 The anti-media antagonism can manifest like an organized crusade in some cases but also more like a culture - a vernacular shared by the president and his allies on the right. — Anchorage Daily News, "A history of the Trump War on Media - the obsession not even coronavirus could stop," 29 Mar. 2020 The first nativities that would be recognisable as such today, performed in churches in the early 13th century, were beset by anxiety about whether the Latin dialogue should be translated into the vernacular. — The Economist, "In the bleak midwinter Nativity plays occupy a vexed place in Britain’s national psyche," 11 Dec. 2019 Hi-touch: A perk for fans who are willing to shell out extra money, the hi-touch is K-pop vernacular for high five. — Jae-ha Kim, Allure, "How to Speak K-Pop Like a True Fan," 13 Apr. 2020

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'vernacular.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.