languages

noun

plural of language
1
as in tongues
the stock of words, pronunciation, and grammar used by a people as their basic means of communication Great Britain, the United States, Australia, and other countries where English is the dominant language

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2
as in dialects
the special terms or expressions of a particular group or field "love" means "nothing" in the language of tennis

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3
as in dictions
the way in which something is put into words we're finding the language of the legal documents to be tough going

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of languages Local players globally are building AI-native products on local rails, in local languages, with local licenses and with local context, years before that attention arrives. — Alex Lazarow, Forbes.com, 4 Aug. 2026 Lawmakers in New Zealand have passed a bill to make English one of the country’s official languages. — Amarachi Orie, CNN Money, 3 Aug. 2026 Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of The Power of Habit, which spent over three years on bestseller lists and has been translated into 40 languages, and Smarter Faster Better, also a bestseller. — Big Think, 2 Aug. 2026 Also, how did his brain come to be filled with weird alien languages and complex star maps? — Richard Edwards, Space.com, 1 Aug. 2026 Xavi speaks six languages and has lived in some of the world’s most iconic cities. — Jay Harris, New York Times, 22 July 2026 Hamsun’s writing has been translated into more than 40 languages. — Leo Barraclough, Variety, 20 July 2026 Smith Galer has much to say against the case for putting languages out of their misery, but her focus is on a point with which even the most unsentimental can surely sympathize. — Nikhil Krishnan, New Yorker, 20 July 2026 The company has also signaled that additional languages and a lower-cost version of the model are on the roadmap. — Wyles Daniel, USA Today, 20 July 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for languages
  1. tongues
  2. dialects
  3. dictions
  4. vocabularies
  5. formulations
  6. idioms
Noun
  • In the margin, staghounds clean their paws with oiled tongues.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 5 Aug. 2026
  • Children separated from their families were taught, sometimes violently, not to speak their native tongues, and many did not pass them on to their children.
    — Kadin Mills, NPR, 26 July 2026
Definition of tongues
Noun
  • Sometimes the problem is not translation at all, but meanings that shift between two dialects of the same language.
    — Karen Stollznow, The Conversation, 23 July 2026
  • Korea and China just demonstrated, in their very different dialects, that friction can be deliberately put back.
    — Jason Snyder, Forbes.com, 17 July 2026
Definition of dialects
Noun
  • The first three were post-dictions of inflation; the latter four were predictions that had not yet been observed when they were made.
    — Ethan Siegel, Big Think, 23 Sep. 2025
Definition of dictions
Noun
  • This requires deployment at the edge, integration into proprietary data pipelines, fine-tuning for domain-specific vocabularies, and compliance with local data sovereignty laws.
    — Gerui Wang, Forbes.com, 27 July 2026
  • This gap can help explain why some children’s vocabularies grow so much faster than others.
    — Michelle Kearney, The Conversation, 7 July 2026
Definition of vocabularies
Noun
  • Cofounded by Juliette Lailler and Marie Belile, Krème touts clean, creamy formulations and focuses on nourishing the skin’s microbiome, which shields against germs, pathogens and inflammation.
    — Samantha Conti, Footwear News, 31 July 2026
  • However, researchers have likewise criticized the HABITS trial for possible discrepancies in the treatment formulations given to patients.
    — Versha Pleasant, The Conversation, 30 July 2026
Definition of formulations
Noun
  • On the one hand, the translation serves as a source for the idioms of nineteenth-century English; on the other, as evidence of the ideas that the translator held about a Colombian woman writer.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 1 July 2026
  • The film’s look is inspired by ink wash paintings and wood blocks, moving fluidly between different visual idioms.
    — Jordan Hoffman, Entertainment Weekly, 1 July 2026
Definition of idioms

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languages
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Cite this Entry

“Languages.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/languages. Accessed 8 Aug. 2026.

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