language – English noun declension

English noun forms of language

Noun: language
Singularlanguage
Plurallanguages

Sample Sentences

  • The English and German languages are both members of the West Germanic language family.
  • Deaf and mute people communicate using sign language.
  • He appears, and gives his advice, accompanied by a stone, which, by being put into the mouth, endows its possessor with the gift of all languages. [1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 211:]
  • Hence the natural language of the mute is, in schools of this class, suppressed as soon and as far as possible, and its existence as a language, capable of being made the reliable and precise vehicle for the widest range of thought, is ignored. [1983, History of the College for the Deaf, 1857-1907, →ISBN, page 240:]
  • No language could express his rage and despair. [1900, William Beckford, The History of the Caliph Vathek, page 50:]
  • Mr. Darko, generally acknowledged to be the last surviving member of the Ofo Tribe, was also the last remaining speaker of the tribe's language. [2000, Geary Hobson, The Last of the Ofos, →ISBN, page 113:]
  • Many of us have entertained the idea of expanding our horizons. Learning a foreign language is an obvious option.
  • It’s one that I would personally endorse: My individual circumstances were such that, by the age of 12, I could speak German, Greek and English, so languages became my passion and my hobby. [2021 April 25, John Malathronas, “Which languages are easiest – and most difficult – for native English speakers to learn?”, in CNN, archived from the original on 22 Mar 2022:]
  • Muksin specifically mentioned 11 extinct indigenous languages, such as Tandia and Mawes in West Papua and Papua, along with Kajeli, Piru, Moksela, Palumata, Ternateno, Hukumina, Hoti, Serua, and Nila in different areas of Maluku. [2024 March 8, Antara, “11 Indigenous Languages Declared Extinct: Education Ministry”, in Jakarta Globe, archived from the original on 01 Feb 2025:]
  • the gift of language
  • It is wholly out of the power of language to convey any idea of the blissful enjoyment of obtaining water, after an almost total want of it, during eight and forty hours, in the scorching regions of an Arabian desert, in the month of July. [1805 December, Julius Griffiths, “A Journey across the Desert”, in The Monthly Mirror, page 362:]
  • Language is the articulation of the limited to express the unlimited; it is the ultimate mystery which is the image of God, for in breaking up infinity to create finite beings, God has found a way to let the limited being yet be a reflection of His unlimited Being. [1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 15:]
  • legal language; the language of chemistry
  • Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language, he expressed the important words by an initial, a medial, or a final consonant, and made scratches for all the words between; his clerks, however, understood him very well. [1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC:]
  • And ‘blubbing’ . . . Blubbing went out with ‘decent’ and ‘ripping’. Mind you, not a bad new language to start up. 1920s schoolboy slang could be due for a revival. [1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 1, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section II, page 24:]
  • Technological advances are notorious for exposing the open-endedness of the language in our laws, even when we thought our definitions were airtight. Lawmakers can’t anticipate everything. Indeed, you could make the case that the whole area of patent law just is the problem of deciding whether some new technology should fall within the range of the language of the patent. [2012 April 22, Peter Ludlow, “The Living Word”, in The New York Times, retrieved 23 Jan 2026:]
  • A Superior Court judge Tuesday let stand an arbitrator’s ruling that the city was allowed to pass onto its firefighters increased pension and retirement benefit costs due to changes in the state pension system. The city firefighters' union had gone to court seeking to overturn the arbitrator’s 2015 decision, claiming he’d misinterpreted the language in the contract. In his 17-page decision, Superior Court Justice Joseph Montalbano noted that by law the union had to do more than just have a good argument. [2017 September 17, John Hill, “Judge backs city on firefighters' retirement ruling”, in The Providence Journal, retrieved 23 Jan 2026:]
  • Massachusetts often claims to be a right-to-shelter state because, on the books, it provides homeless families access to emergency shelter, free of cost. This was the purpose for which the right-to-shelter law was crafted. The language of the law, however, could not be further from the truth. [2023 August 25, Timothy Scalona, “The myth of right to shelter in Massachusetts”, in The Boston Globe, retrieved 23 Jan 2026:]
  • body language; the language of the eyes
  • A tale about themselves [is] told by people with help from the universal languages of their eyes, their hands, and even their shirting feet. [2001, Eugene C. Kennedy, Sara C. Charles, On Becoming a Counselor, →ISBN:]
  • Birding had become like that for me. It is a language that, once learnt, I have been unable to unlearn. [2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 231:]
  • A more likely hypothesis was that the attacked leaves were transmitting some airborne chemical signal to sound the alarm, rather like insects sending out warnings […] But this is the first time that a plant-to-plant language has been detected. [1983, The Listener, volume 110, page 14:]
  • Prairie dogs use their language to refer to real dangers in the real world, so it definitely has meaning. [2009, Animals in Translation, page 274:]
  • In fact pointers are called references in these languages to distinguish them from pointers in languages like C and C++. [2015, Kent D. Lee, Foundations of Programming Languages, →ISBN, page 94:]
  • Their language simple, as their manners meek, […] [1782, William Cowper, Hope:]
  • The language used in the law does not permit any other interpretation.
  • The language he used to talk to me was obscene.
  • "Where the hell is Horace?" ¶ "There he is. He's coming. You shouldn't use language." [1978, James Carroll, Mortal Friends, →ISBN, page 500:]

Etymology

1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s
3. Proto-Italic *dn̥ɣwā
4. Latin dingua
5. Latin lingua
6. Proto-Indo-European *-h₂
7. Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂
8. Proto-Indo-European *-tós
9. Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂tos
10. Proto-Italic *-ātos
11. Latin -ātus
12. Proto-Indo-European *-ikos
13. Proto-Italic *-ikos
14. Latin -icus
15. Latin -āticus
16. Latin -āticum
17. Vulgar Latin *linguāticum
18. Old French languagebor.
19. Middle English langage
20. English language
21. From Middle English langage, language, from Old French language, from Vulgar Latin *linguāticum, from Latin lingua (“tongue, speech, language”), from Old Latin dingua (“tongue”), from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s (“tongue, speech, language”). Doublet of langaj. Displaced native Old English ġeþēode. See: Middle English Nouns 'langage', Latin Nouns 'lingua'.

Verbs referencing "language"

Spanish Nouns lenguaje.