linguistic

Etymology

Borrowed from German linguistisch, equivalent to linguist + -ic. Compare linguistics. Ultimately from Latin lingua (“tongue”). Attested in English since 1825.

adj

  1. Of or relating to language.
    Along with the Hebrew language, the grammatical knowledge of which was greatly advanced by him, he now devoted himself to the study of a variety of languages[…] In the year 1800 he was invited to go to Halle as an ordinary professor of theology and Oriental literature. Without giving up his linguistic studies, he now devoted considerable time to the critical examination of the early books of the Old Testament, 1848, George Long, “Vater, Johan Severin”, in The Penny Cyclopædia, volume 26, page 152
    Swearing doesn't just mean what we now understand by "dirty words". It is entwined, in social and linguistic history, with the other sort of swearing: vows and oaths. 2013-06-14, Sam Leith, “Where the profound meets the profane”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 37
  2. Of or relating to linguistics.
    We have argued that the ability to make judgments about well-formedness and structure holds at all four major linguistic levels — Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics. 1988, Andrew Radford, Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 50
  3. (computing) Relating to a computer language.
    The message is that we need language features that deal with schematic and linguistic discrepancies. 1993, Dimitris N. Chorafas, Manufacturing Databases and Computer Integrated Systems, CRC Press, page 114

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