language

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the mental faculty or power of vocal communication

   language sets homo sapiens apart from all other animals

2. 2
   noun

   the cognitive processes involved in producing and understanding linguistic communication

   We didn't have the language to express our feelings.

3. 3
   noun

   a systematic means of communicating by the use of sounds or conventional symbols

   I taught foreign languages.

4. 4
   noun

   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.

   The English and German languages are both members of the West Germanic language family.

5. 5
   noun

   The ability to communicate using words.

   the gift of language

6. 6
   noun

   A sublanguage: the slang of a particular community or jargon of a particular specialist field.

   legal language; the language of chemistry

7. 7
   noun

   The specific wording or style of a text, such as a law or a contract.

   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.

8. 8
   noun

   The expression of thought (the communication of meaning) in a specified way; that which communicates something, as language does.

   body language; the language of the eyes

Etymology

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.