
  • WordNet 3.6
    • n language the mental faculty or power of vocal communication "language sets homo sapiens apart from all other animals"
    • n language the cognitive processes involved in producing and understanding linguistic communication "he didn't have the language to express his feelings"
    • n language a systematic means of communicating by the use of sounds or conventional symbols "he taught foreign languages","the language introduced is standard throughout the text","the speed with which a program can be executed depends on the language in which it is written"
    • n language a system of words used to name things in a particular discipline "legal terminology","biological nomenclature","the language of sociology"
    • n language the text of a popular song or musical-comedy number "his compositions always started with the lyrics","he wrote both words and music","the song uses colloquial language"
    • ***
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
  • Interesting fact: There are about 6,800 languages in the world
    • Language A race, as distinguished by its speech. "All the people, the nations, and the languages , fell down and worshiped the golden image."
    • Language Any means of conveying or communicating ideas;
    • Language The characteristic mode of arranging words, peculiar to an individual speaker or writer; manner of expression; style. "Others for language all their care express."
    • Language The expression of ideas by writing, or any other instrumentality.
    • Language The forms of speech, or the methods of expressing ideas, peculiar to a particular nation.
    • Language The inarticulate sounds by which animals inferior to man express their feelings or their wants.
    • Language The suggestion, by objects, actions, or conditions, of ideas associated therewith; as, the language of flowers. "There was . . . language in their very gesture."
    • v. t Language To communicate by language; to express in language. "Others were languaged in such doubtful expressions that they have a double sense."
    • ***
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
  • Interesting fact: French was the official language of England for over 600 years.
    • n language The whole body of uttered signs employed and understood by a given community as expression of its thoughts; the aggregate of words, and of methods of their combination into sentences, used in a community for communication and record and for carrying on the processes of thought: as, the English language; the Greek language. The languages of the world, each of them unintelligible to the speakers of any other, are very numerous, rather exceeding than falling short of a thousand. Of these, each individual (without reference to his race) acquires for his first language or “mother-tongue” that one which he hears used by those about him in childhood, as he may later learn some other, even to the substitution of it for his “mother-tongue” and oblivion of the latter. Many languages are related with one another—that is, there is such correspondence in their words and forms as shows them to have descended from a common ancestor, or to have reached their present form by gradual divergent alteration of the same original language, since, by the action of its speakers, every living language is undergoing constant change. A body of languages thus related is called a family or stock; and the classification of all human tongues into families is one of the most important results of the study of language. Families then are divided into subordinate divisions called groups, branches, subbranehes, or the like. Examples of families are the Aryan or Indo-European, the Semitic, and so on. (See the various names.) With reference to their relationship to a larger class, languages are also called dialects: thus, Yorkshire and Scotch are dialects of English; English and Dutch are Low-German dialects; German, Slavonic, Celtic, etc., are Aryan dialects. (See dialect.) Languages differ not only in material, but also in regard to structure, or the apparatus of forms, connections, auxiliaries, etc., by which the modifications and relations of ideas are expressed. Some are more synthetic, some more analytic; some are isolating, or destitute of formal distinctions, whether of parts of speech or of inflections; some are agglutinative, or have words made up of parts rather loosely joined together; some have their words, or part of them, more completely integrated, to the complete disguise of their original constituents, and even, in greater or less part, the substitution of an internal change (as in sing, sang, sung, song) for an external (as in love, loved, loving, lover). This characteristic is called inflective, and is seen in highest degree in two of the families (Aryan and Semitic) mentioned above. (See agglutinate.) Languages are usually designated by an adjective formed (in -ish, -an, -ese, -ic, -ine, etc., or without any termination) from the name of the country or people (such adjective used alone, as a noun, being the particular name of the language), as English, Spanish, Scottish, Scotch, Dutch, Welsh, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Siamese, Gaelic, Arabic, Latin, Greek, etc.; but the name is often of other origin or formation, as Sanskrit, Prakrit.
    • n language Power of expression by utterance; the capacities and impulses that lead to the production and use of languages; uttered expression; human speech considered as a whole: as, language is the peculiar possession of man.
    • n language The words or expressions appropriate to or especially employed in any branch of knowledge or particular condition of life: as, the language of chemistry; the language of common life.
    • n language The manner of expression, either by speech or writing; style.
    • n language Hence The inarticulate sounds by which irrational animals express their feelings and wants: as, the language of birds.
    • n language The expression of thought in any way, articulate or inarticulate, conventional or unconventional: as, the language of signs; the language of the eyes; the language of flowers.
    • n language A people or race, as distinguished by its speech; a tribe.
    • n language Now the Coptic is no more a living language, nor is it understood by any, except that some of the priests understand a little of their liturgy, tho' many of them cannot so much as read it, but get their long offices by rote.
    • n language Synonyms Language, Dialect, Idiom, Diction, Vocabulary; tongue. The first five words are arranged in a descending scale. In common use it is taken for granted that the dialects under one language are enough alike to be reasonably well understood by all who are of that language, while different languages are so unlike that special study is needed to enable one to understand a language that is not his own; but this is not an essential difference. Idiom, literally a personal peculiarity, is in this connection a form of a language somewhat less marked than a dialect: as, the New England idiom. Diction is often used for the set of words or vocabulary belonging to a person or class, making him or it differ in speech from others; but both this and idiom are often expressed by dialect. (See diction.) Vocabulary means the total of the words used by a person, class, etc., considered as a list or number of different words: as, he has a large vocabulary. In this respect it differs from another meaning of idiom—that is, any peculiar combination of words used by a person, community, nation, etc.
    • language To express in language.
    • n language In organ-building, the horizontal shelf or partition of wood or metal opposite and below the mouth of a flue-pipe, by which the wind is obliged to pass through a narrow slit between it and the lower lip and to impinge upon the edge of the upper lip. The front edge of the language is usually serrated. See pipe. Also called languid.
    • n language Same as languet .
    • ***
Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
  • Interesting fact: South Africa used to have two official languages, now it has eleven.
    • n Language lang′gwāj that which is spoken by the tongue: human speech: speech peculiar to a nation: style or expression peculiar to an individual: diction: any manner of expressing thought
    • v.t Language to express in language
    • ***


  • Henry David Thoreau
    “The language of friendship is not words but meanings.”
  • Marcellinus Ammianus
    Marcellinus Ammianus
    “The language of truth is unadorned and always simple.”
  • Sir Edward Appleton
    Sir Edward Appleton
  • William S. Burroughs
    “Language is a virus from outer space.”
  • Charlemagne
  • George Eliot


Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
OE. langage, F. langage, fr. L. lingua, the tongue, hence speech, language; akin to E. tongue,. See Tongue, cf. Lingual


In literature:

This language will soon be universal; by common consent it will become the language of the world.
"The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882" by Joseph Wild
"Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen" by Hans Christian Andersen
Though strongly influenced by Rome in their trade and methods of agriculture, the Belgo-Romans had retained their language and religion.
"Belgium" by Emile Cammaerts
In general, Jewish poets and philosophers have manipulated that language with surprising dexterity.
"Jewish Literature and Other Essays" by Gustav Karpeles
The powers of the modern languages had at length been developed.
Language as a Means of Expression.
Now no derived word can be brought whole from a language unless, in that language, all its parts exist.
"A Handbook of the English Language" by Robert Gordon Latham
The Competition of the Cultural Languages.
Cardinal Mezzofanti knew, it is said, more than a hundred languages.
"The History of Dartmouth College" by Baxter Perry Smith
What a wealth of language one hears!

In poetry:

So we know
she must have said something
to him--What language,
life? Oh, what language?
"Sarn Rhiw" by R S Thomas
He spake in an unknown language,
In a strange sad melody,
And I had to learn it as children
Their own by their mother's knee.
"An Old Copy Of Dante" by Alexander Anderson
Oh, days of the lovely October,
How dear thou art to me;
Words are weak, when my soul would speak,
In language taught by thee.
"October" by Sallie Williams Hardcastle
She has a name, the sweetest name
That language can bestow.
'Twould break the spell
If I should tell, -
Wouldn't you like to know?
""Wouldn't You Like To KNow"" by John Godfrey Saxe
Alas! it were the saddening tale
That every language knows,â€”Â­
The wooing wind, the yielding sail,
The sunbeam and the rose.
"Agnes" by Oliver Wendell Holmes
These have more language than my song,
Take them and let them speak for me.
I whispered them a secret thing
Down the green lanes of Allary.
"With Flowers" by Francis Ledwidge

In news:

It's all around us, but how recognizable and effective is the language used to persuade us every day.
A study suggests that, particularly for sensitive subjects, patients like to hear their language reflected back.
Nancy Gardella lists a few of her many accomplishments: speaking four languages, raising a Marine Corps son, taking care of her elderly parents, and running a successful housekeeping and property management firm.
Not too many years ago, the print community had a unique language with shared meanings.
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Feathers were ruffled in the American Jewish community earlier this week when the Democratic Party revealed a platform missing key language about Jerusalem that appeared in the 2008 platform.
Linguists say their language, Euskara, is unrelated to any other.
Terry Gibbs, the Energizer Bunny of jazz, has a loving tribute to his favorite language, undiluted bebop : 52nd & Broadway (Mack Avenue).
Learn to speak his language.
In its 15 years of existence, the Milwaukee Choral Artists ensemble has sung in 28 languages.
Brit helmer, scribe DeVincentis making doc into English-language feature.
Behold a collection of bloopers , many with language that ends up being NSFW.
A volunteer effort to type thousands of pages of Hawaiian-language newspapers has ended, but organizers hope the project can move forward in preserving the language and culture.
Thanks to TV shows like Lie to Me and so-called body language experts commenting on the candidates during the American election season, a number of misunderstandings about body language have become part of modern culture.

In science:

In this paper, we introduce a speciﬁcation language, SL, which is tailored to the writing of syntactic theories of language semantics.
From Syntactic Theories to Interpreters: A Specification Language and Its Compilation
Of course, the words “and” and “or”, are dependent on the language and perhaps even the genre of the language.
The language, recognised by the resulting NFSTA A = (Σ, Q, Qf , q0 , ∆), is exactly (up to the mapping τ ) the language recognised by the original NCFTA, which can be proven by applying the relevant deﬁnitions.
Using Tree Automata and Regular Expressions to Manipulate Hierarchically Structured Data
According to the formal language theory, the class of recognisable (regular) string languages is closed under union, under intersection, and under complementation .
Using Tree Automata and Regular Expressions to Manipulate Hierarchically Structured Data
The aim of this section is to connect the usual language of the ref. model with the language of the statistical mechanics of the random media.
Space-Time Evolution of the Oscillator, Rapidly moving in a random media