vernacular

plural vernaculars

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

   The principal vernacular of the United States is English.

   1 more example

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

   Synonyms: vulgate, vulgar

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

   Near-synonyms: basilect, demotic

   1 more example

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

   Synonyms: basilect, demotic

3. Language unique to a particular group of people.

   Near-synonyms: jargon, argot, dialect, slang

   1 more example

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

   Synonyms: jargon, argot, dialect, slang

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.

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

   Synonyms: vulgate, vulgar

6. architectureA style of architecture involving local building materials and styles; not imported.

comparative more vernacular · superlative most vernacular

1. 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

   1 more example

   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.

   1983, Richard Ellis, The Book of Sharks, Knopf, →ISBN, page 111

   Synonyms: common, everyday, indigenous, ordinary, vulgar, colloquial, basilectal, demotic

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

   a vernacular disease

   1 more example

   Near-synonyms: native, indigenous; endemic

   Synonyms: native, indigenous, endemic

3. architectureOf or related to local building materials and styles; not imported.

   Synonyms: folk

4. artConnected to a collective memory; not imported.
5. biologyNot attempting to use the rules of a taxonomic code, especially, not using scientific Latin.

   An English vernacular name for Rosa multiflora is multiflora rose.

   Synonyms: common