vernacular

Etymology

From Latin vernāculus (“domestic, indigenous, of or pertaining to home-born slaves”), from verna (“a native, a home-born slave (one born in his master's house)”).

noun

1. The language of a people or a national language.
   The vernacular of the United States is English.
2. Everyday speech or dialect, including colloquialisms, as opposed to standard, literary, liturgical, or scientific idiom.
   Street vernacular can be quite different from what is heard elsewhere.
3. Language unique to a particular group of people.
   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 allowed the celebration of the mass in the vernacular.
6. (architecture) A style of architecture involving local building materials and styles, not imported.

adj

1. Of or pertaining to everyday language, as opposed to standard, literary, liturgical, or scientific idiom.
   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, page 111
2. Belonging to the country of one's birth; one's own by birth or nature.
   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.