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Language   /lˈæŋgwədʒ/  /lˈæŋgwɪdʒ/   Listen
noun
Language  n.  
1.
Any means of conveying or communicating ideas; specifically, Human speech; the expression of ideas by the voice; sounds, expressive of thought, articulated by the organs of the throat and mouth. Note: Language consists in the oral utterance of sounds which usage has made the representatives of ideas. When two or more persons customarily annex the same sounds to the same ideas, the expression of these sounds by one person communicates his ideas to another. This is the primary sense of language, the use of which is to communicate the thoughts of one person to another through the organs of hearing. Articulate sounds are represented to the eye by letters, marks, or characters, which form words.
2.
The expression of ideas by writing, or any other instrumentality.
3.
The forms of speech, or the methods of expressing ideas, peculiar to a particular nation.
4.
The characteristic mode of arranging words, peculiar to an individual speaker or writer; manner of expression; style. "Others for language all their care express."
5.
The inarticulate sounds by which animals inferior to man express their feelings or their wants.
6.
The suggestion, by objects, actions, or conditions, of ideas associated therewith; as, the language of flowers. "There was... language in their very gesture."
7.
The vocabulary and phraseology belonging to an art or department of knowledge; as, medical language; the language of chemistry or theology.
8.
A race, as distinguished by its speech. (R.) "All the people, the nations, and the languages, fell down and worshiped the golden image."
9.
Any system of symbols created for the purpose of communicating ideas, emotions, commands, etc., between sentient agents.
10.
Specifically: (computers) Any set of symbols and the rules for combining them which are used to specify to a computer the actions that it is to take; also referred to as a computer lanugage or programming language; as, JAVA is a new and flexible high-level language which has achieved popularity very rapidly. Note: Computer languages are classed a low-level if each instruction specifies only one operation of the computer, or high-level if each instruction may specify a complex combination of operations. Machine language and assembly language are low-level computer languages. FORTRAN, COBOL and C are high-level computer languages. Other computer languages, such as JAVA, allow even more complex combinations of low-level operations to be performed with a single command. Many programs, such as databases, are supplied with special languages adapted to manipulate the objects of concern for that specific program. These are also high-level languages.
Language master, a teacher of languages. (Obs.)
Synonyms: Speech; tongue; idiom; dialect; phraseology; diction; discourse; conversation; talk. Language, Speech, Tongue, Idiom, Dialect. Language is generic, denoting, in its most extended use, any mode of conveying ideas; speech is the language of articulate sounds; tongue is the Anglo-Saxon term for language, esp. for spoken language; as, the English tongue. Idiom denotes the forms of construction peculiar to a particular language; dialects are varieties of expression which spring up in different parts of a country among people speaking substantially the same language.


verb
Language  v. t.  (past & past part. languaged; pres. part. languaging)  To communicate by language; to express in language. "Others were languaged in such doubtful expressions that they have a double sense."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Language" Quotes from Famous Books



... poor opinion of the Italian character. He argued that a nation which depended for its prosperity on wines and silk—"and such wines"—must have too much of the feminine in it to excel. He had a shadowy idea that he understood the language, though he could not speak ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... hand. The wires were not hammered; they were touched knowingly as by the player's own fingers, and so they sang—and from out among the chords there stole an errant melody. This was not "piano-playing" and not a pianist's triumphant nimbleness—it was music. Art is the language of a heart that knows how to speak, and a heart that knew how was speaking here. What it told was something immeasurably wistful, something that might have welled up in the breast of a young girl standing at twilight in an April orchard. It was ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... dictum, in the language of the law, is a gratuitous opinion, an individual impertinence, which, whether it be wise or foolish, right or wrong, bindeth none—not even the lips that ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... For a bush publican and store-keeper he had an unusual reputation for honesty—and well deserved it, for all his roughness and lurid language when aroused to wrath. He asked Gerrard to ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... first to last, Xavier constantly dwells upon his difficulties with the various languages of the different tribes among whom he went. He tells us how he surmounted these difficulties: sometimes by learning just enough of a language to translate into it some of the main Church formulas; sometimes by getting the help of others to patch together some pious teachings to be learned by rote; sometimes by employing interpreters; and sometimes by a mixture of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White


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