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 (General Australian):

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

vernacular (plural vernaculars)

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

   Synonyms: vulgate, vulgar

   Coordinate terms: lingua franca, link language, vehicular language; official language; minority language

   The principal vernacular of the United States is English.

   The idea that the Bible should be translated into vernaculars was explosive in medieval society.

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

   Near-synonyms: basilect, demotic

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

3. Language unique to a particular group of people.

   Near-synonyms: jargon, argot, dialect, slang

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

4. A language lacking standardization or a written form.
5. Indigenous spoken language, as distinct from a literary or liturgical language such as Ecclesiastical Latin.

   Synonyms: vulgate, vulgar

   Vatican II, a church council in the 1960s, allowed the celebration of the mass in the vernacular.

6. (architecture) A style of architecture involving local building materials and styles; not imported.

• →⇒ Irish: béarlagair

• vernacular on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

vernacular (comparative more vernacular, superlative most vernacular)

2. Of or pertaining to everyday language, as opposed to standard, literary, liturgical, or scientific idiom.

   Near-synonyms: common, everyday, indigenous, ordinary, vulgar, colloquial, basilectal, demotic

   • 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.

4. Belonging to the country of one's birth; one's own by birth or by nature.

   Near-synonyms: native, indigenous; endemic

   a vernacular disease

6. (architecture) Of or related to local building materials and styles; not imported.

   Synonym: folk

   Coordinate terms: primitive, naive

8. (art) Connected to a collective memory; not imported.
10. (taxonomy) Not attempting to use the rules of a taxonomic code, especially, not using scientific Latin.

    Synonym: common

    Hypernym: nonsystematic

    An English vernacular name for Rosa multiflora is multiflora rose.

• unvernacular

• neo-vernacular

• “vernacular”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “vernacular”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “vernacular”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

vernacular m or f (plural vernaculares)

1. vernacular (pertaining to everyday language)

   Synonym: vernáculo

• “vernacular”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2026
• “vernacular”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2026

Borrowed from French vernaculaire.

vernacular m or n (feminine singular vernaculară, masculine plural vernaculari, feminine/neuter plural vernaculare)

1. vernacular

• vernacular in Academia Română, Micul dicționar academic, ediția a II-a, Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic, 2010. →ISBN