vernacular

From Latin vernāculus (“domestic, indigenous, of or pertaining to home-born slaves”), from verna (“a native, a home-born slave (one born in his master's house)”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /vəˈnækjələ/, /vəˈnækjʊlə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /vɚˈnækjəlɚ/

• Audio (US)

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• Audio (AU)

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• Rhymes: -ækjələ(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: ver‧nac‧u‧lar

vernacular (plural vernaculars)

1. The language of a people or a national language.

   A vernacular of the United States is English.

2. Everyday speech or dialect, including colloquialisms, as opposed to standard, literary, liturgical, or scientific idiom.

   Street vernacular can be quite different from what is heard elsewhere.

3. Language unique to a particular group of people; jargon, argot.

   For those of a certain age, hiphop vernacular might just as well be a foreign language.

4. (Roman Catholicism) The indigenous language of a people, into which the words of the Mass are translated.

   Vatican II allowed the celebration of the mass in the vernacular.

• (language unique to a group): dialect, idiom, argot, jargon, slang

• (national language): lingua franca

vernacular (comparative more vernacular, superlative most vernacular)

1. Of or pertaining to everyday language, as opposed to standard, literary, liturgical, or scientific idiom.
   • 1983, Richard Ellis, The Book of Sharks, Knopf, →ISBN, page 111:

     There are blacktips, silvertips, bronze whalers, black whalers, spinner sharks, and bignose sharks. These of course are vernacular names, but this is one case where the scientific nomenclature does not clarify the species, since it is now being revised.

2. Belonging to the country of one's birth; one's own by birth or nature; native; indigenous.

   a vernacular disease

3. (architecture) Of or related to local building materials and styles; not imported.
4. (art) Connected to a collective memory; not imported.

• (of everyday language): common, everyday, indigenous, ordinary, vulgar, colloquial
• (architecture): folk

• vernacularism
• vernacularist

• vernacular in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• vernacular in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• vernacular at OneLook Dictionary Search

vernacular m or f (plural vernaculares, comparable)

1. vernacular (pertaining to everyday language)

   Synonym: vernáculo