language

noun

1. (countable)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.”

   “Deaf and mute people communicate using sign language.”

   “He appears, and gives his advice, accompanied by a stone, which, by being put into the mouth, endows its possessor with the gift of all languages.”

   “Hence the natural language of the mute is, in schools of this class, suppressed as soon and as far as possible, and its existence as a language, capable of being made the reliable and precise vehicle for the widest range of thought, is ignored.”

   “No language could express his rage and despair.”

2. (uncountable)The ability to communicate using words.

   “the gift of language”

   “It is wholly out of the power of language to convey any idea of the blissful enjoyment of obtaining water, after an almost total want of it, during eight and forty hours, in the scorching regions of an Arabian desert, in the month of July.”

   “Language is the articulation of the limited to express the unlimited; it is the ultimate mystery which is the image of God, for in breaking up infinity to create finite beings, God has found a way to let the limited being yet be a reflection of His unlimited Being.”

3. (uncountable)A sublanguage: the slang of a particular community or jargon of a particular specialist field.

   “legal language; the language of chemistry”

   “Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language, he expressed the important words by an initial, a medial, or a final consonant, and made scratches for all the words between; his clerks, however, understood him very well.”

   “And ‘blubbing’ . . . Blubbing went out with ‘decent’ and ‘ripping’. Mind you, not a bad new language to start up. 1920s schoolboy slang could be due for a revival.”

4. (uncountable)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.”

   “Massachusetts often claims to be a right-to-shelter state because, on the books, it provides homeless families access to emergency shelter, free of cost. This was the purpose for which the right-to-shelter law was crafted. The language of the law, however, could not be further from the truth.”

5. (countable, figuratively, uncountable)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”

   “A tale about themselves [is] told by people with help from the universal languages of their eyes, their hands, and even their shirting feet.”

   “Birding had become like that for me. It is a language that, once learnt, I have been unable to unlearn.”

6. (countable, uncountable)A body of sounds, signs or signals by which animals communicate, and by which plants are sometimes also thought to communicate.

   “A more likely hypothesis was that the attacked leaves were transmitting some airborne chemical signal to sound the alarm, rather like insects sending out warnings […] But this is the first time that a plant-to-plant language has been detected.”

   “Prairie dogs use their language to refer to real dangers in the real world, so it definitely has meaning.”

7. (countable)A computer language; a machine language.

   “In fact pointers are called references in these languages to distinguish them from pointers in languages like C and C++.”

8. (uncountable)A manner of expression.

   “Their language simple, as their manners meek, […]”

9. (uncountable)The particular words used in a speech or a passage of text.

   “The language used in the law does not permit any other interpretation.”

   “The language he used to talk to me was obscene.”

10. (euphemistic, uncountable)Profanity.

    “"Where the hell is Horace?" ¶ "There he is. He's coming. You shouldn't use language."”

11. A languet, a flat plate in or below the flue pipe of an organ.

    “A flue-pipe is one in which the air passes through the throat, or flue, which is the narrow, longitudinal aperture between the lower lip and the tongue, or language. […] The language is adjusted by slightly elevating or depressing it, […]”

verb

1. (nonstandard, rare)To communicate by language; to express in language.

   “Others were languaged in such doubtful expressions that they have a double sense.”

intj

1. An admonishment said in response to someone using vulgar language during a conversation.