a. and sb. Also 7 vernaculer. [f. L. vernācul-us domestic, native, indigenous (hence It. vernacolo, Pg. vernaculo), f. verna a home-born slave, a native.
The Latin adj. occurs in a large variety of applications; the restricted use common in English is represented by vernacula vocabula in Varro.]
A. adj. 1. That writes, uses or speaks the native or indigenous language of a country or district.
1601. Bp. W. Barlow, Defence, 2. A vernaculer pen-man … hauing translated them into English.
1715. M. Davies, Athen. Brit., I. 77. The Office of the Virgin Mary … is Translated also in most Languages for the Use of the Vernacular Romanists. Ibid. (1716), III. 38. The Learned vernacular Editor of Hippocrates’s Works in French, Mr. Dacier.
1819. W. Taylor, in Monthly Mag., XLVII. 30. The vernacular public remained unmoved, and gazed at the labours of authorship, as Londoners at the opera.
1869. Freeman, Norm. Conq. (1875), III. xii. 145. The vernacular poet more kindly helps us to the real names.
2. Of a language or dialect: That is naturally spoken by the people of a particular country or district; native, indigenous.
Usu. applied to the native speech of a populace, in contrast to another or others acquired for commercial, social or educative purposes; now freq. employed with reference to that of the working classes or the peasantry.
c. 1645. Howell, Lett., II. lvi. 78. The Welsh … is one of the fourteen vernacular and independent tongues of Europ.
1697. Bentley, Phalaris (1699), 316. Being Dorians born, [they] repudiated their vernacular Idiom for that of the Athenians.
1715. M. Davies, Athen. Brit., I. Pref. 35. They don’t understand their Breviaries and Mass-Books, not … when translated and expounded in their respective vernacular Tongues.
1832. G. Downes, Cont. Countries, I. 197. The congregation here being chiefly peasants, and artisans, a sermon was delivered in the vernacular dialect.
1858. Gladstone, Homer, II. ii. 50. When the Chaldee tongue became the vernacular, and the old Hebrew disappeared from common use.
1874. H. R. Reynolds, John Bapt., V. § 3. 338. There were ‘voices’ … which expressed in some vernacular idiom of Hebrew or Greek the thoughts of the Almighty.
transf. 1778. Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, II. 50. They much improved the vernacular style by the use of this exotic phraseology.
1785. European Mag., VIII. 467. Several passages are modulations on the vernacular airs of Otaheite.
1850. Ecclesiologist, XI. 176. Even Rome, then, cannot consistently blame words to the vernacular Gregorian melodies.
b. In predicative use. Also with preps.
1808. Syd. Smith, Wks. (1859), I. 103/2. The Scriptures translated into the Tamulic language, which is vernacular in the southern parts of the peninsula.
1835. Macaulay, in Trevelyan, Compet. Wallah (1866), 321. The intellectual improvement of those classes … can at present be effected only by means of some language not vernacular amongst them.
1856. Mrs. Stowe, Dred, II. xxxii. 323. He commenced a speech in that peculiar slang dialect which was vernacular with them.
1870. Anderson, Missions Amer. Bd., III. iv. 52. The Arab-speaking race … must receive the gospel mainly from those to whom the language is vernacular.
c. Coupled with the name of the language.
1775. Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry (1870), 61. The vernacular English, as I have … remarked, was rough and unpolished.
1840. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Ser. II. Lay St. Aloys. The ‘Requiem’ was sung; Not vernacular French, but a classical tongue.
1864. Dasent, Jest & Earnest (1873), II. 10. The vernacular Anglo-Saxon before the Conquest was undergoing that change which all languages suffer.
1883. Froude, in Contemp. Rev., XLIV. 18. He [Luther] began to translate the Bible into clear vernacular German.
3. Of literary works, etc.: Written or spoken in, translated into the native language of a particular country or people.
1661. Glanvill, Van. Dogm., 156. Though, in Greek or Latine, they amuse us, yet a vernacular translation unmasks them.
1726. M. Davies, Athen. Brit., III. 20. Dr. Harvey’s Family-Physician, and most of Will. Salmon’s Books, with other such like Vernacular Pharmacy.
1788. Warburton, Tracts (1789), 170. Long vernacular Sermons from Dr. Parr.
1841. D’Israeli, Amen. Lit., Pref. (1859), p. iii. A history of our vernacular literature has occupied my studies for many years.
1868. J. H. Blunt. Ref. Ch. Eng., I. 495. Vernacular prayer-books had, indeed, been long known in England.
1874. Green, Short Hist., i. § 5 (1876), 49. The Chronicle remains the first vernacular history of any Teutonic people.
b. Performed in the native language.
1874. A. Somerville, Lect. Missions, xiii. 243. A paper which he read on Vernacular Preaching at the Ootacamund Missionary Conference.
4. Of words, etc.: Of or pertaining to, forming part of, the native language.
1716. M. Davies, Athen. Brit., II. 174. This Ralph is call’d also Roger, the Latin name, Ranulphus, being possibly capable of both those Vernacular Appropriations.
1728. Pope, Dunc., I. Notes. Which being a French and foreign termination, is no way proper to a word entirely English and vernacular.
1788. V. Knox, Winter Even., xxii. (1790), I. 193. Brown … preferred polysyllabic expressions derived from the language of ancient Rome, to his vernacular vocabulary.
1816. Scott, Old Mort., Peroration. O, ignorance! as if the vernacular article of our mother English were capable of declension!
1848. Gallenga, Italy, I. ii. 146. Low-born vernacular idioms were handed down to posterity as the poet’s creation.
1864. Bryce, Holy Rom. Emp., xv. (1875), 257. Whose official style of Augustus, as well as the vernacular name of ‘Kaiser’ [etc.].
b. Native or natural to a particular language.
1844. Proc. Philol. Soc., I. 176. The finding an isolated term in an Anglo-Saxon or German vocabulary by no means proves it to be vernacular to that language.
5. Connected or concerned with the native language.
1845. Stocqueler, Handbk. Brit. India (1854), 234. The southern side of the building is appropriated to the vernacular department, and the northern to the English.
1883. R. B. Smith, Life Ld. Lawrence, II. 535. Efforts were made to extend vernacular education.
6. Of arts, or features of these: Native or peculiar to a particular country or locality.
1857. Sir G. Scott, Sec. & Dom. Architecture, 6. Look at the vernacular cottage-building of the day. Ibid. (a. 1878), Lect. Archit. (1879), II. 315. The revived knowledge of the architecture of Greece rudely disturbed the vernacular style derived from Rome.
1893. Harper’s Weekly, 21 Oct., 1011/2. The theatre is a big, rather bare room, apparently of vernacular Javanese construction.
† 7. Of diseases: Characteristic of, occurring in, a particular country or district; endemic. Obs.
1666. G. Harvey, Morb. Angl., i. (1672), 2. Which instances do evidently bring a Consumption under the notion of a Pandemick, or Endemick, or rather a Vernacular Disease to England.
1728. Chambers, Cycl., s.v., Diseases which reign most in any particular Nation, Province, or District, are called Vernacular Diseases.
8. Of a slave: That is born on his master’s estate; home-born, rare–1.
1804. W. Taylor, in Ann. Rev., II. 326. A disposition to use kindly, and to emancipate frequently, the vernacular slave.
9. Personal, private.
1840. G. S. Faber, Regen., 38. I was favouring my evil propensities, as if they were specially my own vernacular property.
B. sb. 1. The native speech or language of a particular country or district (see A. 2).
a. 1706. Evelyn, Hist. Relig. (1850), I. 427. It is written in the Chaldaeo-Syriac, which was … the vernacular of our Lord.
1840. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Pref. Mr. Maguire,… in his account of the late Coronation, retains his own rich vernacular.
1864. Burton, Scot Abr., II. i. 94. Even within the native stronghold of the Dutch vernacular.
1874. Sayce, Compar. Philol., v. 179. A child can learn as readily the vernacular of Canton as the language of London.
transf. 1807. W. Taylor, in Ann. Rev., V. 575. By neglecting the vernacular in idea, he has missed in part the advantage of home praise and hereditary sympathy.
b. Freq. in phr. in the vernacular.
1815. J. C. Hobhouse, Substance Lett. (1816), I. 176. The court confessor in his sermon at St. Denis … took the opportunity of what is called in the vernacular preaching at the Duke of Orleans.
1856. Dasent, Jest & Earnest (1873), I. 337. The performance of the services of religion in Latin, and no longer as of old in the vernacular.
1889. Jessopp, Coming of Friars, i. 37. Of the five … no one of them was qualified as yet to preach in the vernacular.
c. Without article. (Cf. next.)
1857. Hughes, Tom Brown, I. i. Repeating in true sing-song vernacular the legend of St. George and his fight.
1882. B. D. W. Ramsay, Recoll. Mil. Serv., I. i. 25. The fair songstress opened upon me such a volley of choice Tuscan vernacular, that I fairly fled.
2. With a and pl. A native or indigenous language.
1715. M. Davies, Athen. Brit., I. 325. Charles the Fifth, King of France, order’d the Bible to be translated … in the Picardian and Norman Vernaculars.
a. 1734. North, Lives (1826), III. 322. Latin, and the vernaculars westward,… carry nearly the same idiom.
1850. S. Dobell, Roman, vii. The wayfarer Of many lands is not responsible for each vernacular.
1882. Athenæum, 4 March, 280. Some of the peoples and tribes whose vernaculars that class comprises.
1892. Times, 24 Dec., 3/1. Spain, destined to be for long the most active enemy of the circulation of the Scriptures in modern vernaculars, coming to the front with the first polyglot.
3. transf. The phraseology or idiom of a particular profession, trade, etc.
1876. Tait, Rec. Adv. Phys. Science, vi. 151. To use the vernacular of engineers.
1891. Century Mag., May, 128/2. On the bar we found friends that we had made in Panama, who had preceded us a few days, long enough to speak the vernacular of mining.
Hence Vernacularness. rare–0.
1727. Bailey (vol. II.), Vernacularness, Properness, or Peculiarness to one’s own Country.
