Definition of "vernacular" in English

noun

1. The language of a people or a national 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.

   • 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.

adjective

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

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

   • Near-synonyms: native, indigenous; endemic
   • a vernacular disease

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

4. (art) Connected to a collective memory; not imported.

5. (taxonomy) Not attempting to use the rules of a taxonomic code, especially, not using scientific Latin.

   • An English vernacular name for Rosa multiflora is multiflora rose.