Other forms: languages
A language is the system of words and grammar a people speaks. The English language, learn a language, speak three languages.
It is also used for the way something is expressed — legal language, the language of the report — and for non-human systems: programming languages, sign language, body language. Note that language is uncountable when it means the general faculty — the origins of language — and countable when it means a particular one. And bad language means swearing, which is a fixed and slightly euphemistic phrase used in ratings and complaints.
1nounlanguageThe system of words and grammar used by a people.
“English is the main language spoken in Australia.”
2nounwordedThe way something is worded.
“The language of the contract is deliberately vague.”
3nouncomputerA system for writing computer instructions.
“She writes in three languages and complains about all of them.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
language is a system of communication.
Latin lingua meant tongue, and the same word gave language, linguist and, through a different route, tongue itself. Almost every European language names speech after the organ that makes it, which is why glossary and polyglot come from Greek glossa, also a tongue.
Middle English
langage
English, today
language
From Middle English langage. From Middle English langage, language, from Old French language, from Vulgar Latin linguāticum, from Latin lingua (“tongue, speech, language”), from itc-ola dingua (“tongue”), from Proto-Indo-European dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s (“tongue, speech, language”). a doublet of langaj. Displaced native Old English ġeþēode.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA