Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use vernacular in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, adjective

Vernacular means the language of a people or a national language. Example: “The principal vernacular of the United States is English.”

Examples of vernacular by meaning

nounThe language of a people or a national language.

  • The principal vernacular of the United States is English.
  • The idea that the Bible should be translated into vernaculars was explosive in medieval society.

nounEveryday 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.

nounLanguage unique to a particular group of people.

  • For those of a certain age, hiphop vernacular might just as well be a foreign language.

nounIndigenous spoken language, as distinct from a literary or liturgical language such as Ecclesiastical Latin.

  • Vatican II, a church council in the 1960s, allowed the celebration of the mass in the vernacular.

adjectiveOf or pertaining to everyday language, as opposed to standard, literary, liturgical, or scientific idiom.

  • 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, →ISBN, page 111

adjectiveBelonging to the country of one's birth; one's own by birth or by nature.

  • a vernacular disease

adjectiveNot attempting to use the rules of a taxonomic code, especially, not using scientific Latin.

  • An English vernacular name for Rosa multiflora is multiflora rose.

More sentences with vernacular

  • Aristotle used vernacular names or names borrowed from terrestrial animals, such as mule, wolf or “sea toad”2023, G DeBucquet, “Consumer Perceptions of “Fish” Food”, in Current Challenges for the Aquatic Products. From the entry sea toad
  • I never met anyone who knew it and I have never seen a vernacular name for it.2020, Marwān ibn Janāḥ [i.e., Jonah ibn Janah], “mīm”, in Gerrit Bos, Fabian Käs, transl., edited by Gerrit Bos, Fabian Käs, Mailyn Lübke…. From the entry spignel
  • Just because you see an unfamiliar term doesn’t mean that it’s part of the Twitter vernacular.2015, Laura Fitton, Anum Hussain, Brittany Leaning, with Michael E. Gruen and Leslie Poston, “Language and abbreviations”, in Twitter For…. From the entry Twitterspeak
  • Tepetate is a vernacular Mexican term referring to a hardened land with various degrees of infertility.2006, Rattan Lal, Encyclopedia of Soil Science, volume 2, page 1745. From the entry tepetate
  • Without Amaly near to correct him, Treff slipped into the easy vernacular of a Cracker cowhunter.1998, Herb Chapman, Muncy Chapman, Wiregrass Country: A Florida Pioneer Story, Sarasota, Fla.: Pineapple Press, Inc., →ISBN, page 190. From the entry cowhunter
  • IT was a tale of biblical prophecy told in countercultural vernacular, and it went like this.1986 March 30, Mark Silk, “RELIGIOUS BOOKS: SEVEN THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original…. From the entry Revived Roman Empire
  • Another important aspect of vernacular traditions is the way materials are used.1982, Michael Foster, editor, Architecture: Style, Structure and Design, North Dighton, M.A.: JG Press, published 1997, →ISBN, page 205. From the entry timberish
  • There's a storm blowing up, Sylvester—a 'whopper', speaking in the vernacular of the peasantry.1939, Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf, The Wizard of Oz. From the entry whopper
  • This time Kim thought in the vernacular as he waxed down the oilskin edges of the packets.1900 December – 1901 October, Rudyard Kipling, Kim, London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, →OCLC, page 366. From the entry wax down
  • “The kids love it so much, the word ‘skibidi’ is now part of gen Z and gen Alpha vernacular.”2025 June 25, Elle Hunt, “From Chimpanzini Bananini to Ballerina Cappuccina: how gen alpha went wild for Italian brain rot animals”, in…. From the entry Gen Alpha
  • Toward the end of the 18ᵗʰ century, the ma'amar was replaced by a Dvar Torah in the vernacular.2024, David Golinkin, “The Origin and History of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Ceremony”, in Responsa in a Moment, volume 4, page 50. From the entry maamar
  • The medium in vernacular schools is either Tamil or Chinese.2022 March 29, Jananey Ramachandran, “Ex-deputy minister, educationist explain need for remove classes”, in Free Malaysia Today. From the entry vernacular school
  • It is an aspirational narrative, accompanied by a specific vernacular.2018 June 27, Sirin Kale, “‘Get shredded in six weeks!’ The problem with extreme male body transformations”, in The Guardian. From the entry tonk
  • “It’s a horizontal community, very vernacular and organic.”2017 January 11, Christopher Dewolf, “Stories behind Hong Kong districts: Pok Fu Lam Village, once a rural idyll, unbowed amid uncertain…. From the entry Pok Fu Lam
  • The Lee-Fendall House is a “telescope” house, which is a vernacular piece of architecture developed on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.2012, John J. Cullinane, Maintaining and Repairing Old and Historic Buildings, John Wiley & Sons, page 113. From the entry telescope house
  • Dara will have left, I hope, with a newfound conviction that Irish is the Hullish vernacular of choice.2012, David Wheatley, Vacuous and Unknown, in Sketches, Dispatches, Hull Tales and Ballads: the Humber Writers celebrate the bicentenary…. From the entry Hullish
  • I was, to use the vernacular, bleedin' morto.2007 March 21, Kilian Doyle, "An iconic parade" The Irish Times (Dublin) Motoring p.3. From the entry morto
  • These glossaria are alphabetically arranged according to the Latin lemmata and include explicatory glosses in a vernacular language.2006, E. K. Brown, Anne Anderson, editors, Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition, Elsevier, →ISBN, page 20. From the entry glossarium
  • Global new vocabularies can be found from vernacular houses to large scale urban developments, in local communities or even in ecumenopoleis.2005, SB05Tokyo Student Session Organising Committee, Sustainable Building Design Book: The 2005 World Sustainable Building Conference in…. From the entry ecumenopoleis
  • Also, it should be noted that the vernaculars sometimes underwent horizontal levelling (koineisation) before the onset of standardisation.2005, Peter Auer, “Europe’s sociolinguistic unity, or: A typology of European dialect/standard constellations”, in Nicole Delbecque, Johan…. From the entry koinai
  • Classic Arabic didn't "turn into" the various Arabic vernaculars.2004 April 22, Peter T. Daniels, “Taiwanese and their language”, in soc.culture.china (Usenet). From the entry arabic
  • The asthenosphere that underlies the surface plates is not liquid in any vernacular sense, although it is relatively plastic.2004, Richard Fortey, The Earth, Folio Society, published 2011, page 79. From the entry asthenosphere
  • Hence the anxiety of these "experts" to protect their monopoly by refusing to express themselves in the vernacular.2002, Francoise Waquet, Latin: Or the Empire of the Sign, page 232. From the entry cabalize
  • To write a vernacular word, Chu Nom used two Chinese ideograms—one to indicate the meaning, the other the sound.1998, Kevin Bowen, Ba Chung Nguyen, Bruce Weigl, editors, Mountain River, page xxiv. From the entry chu nom
  • "In medieval literary studies the discussion of "transitional texts" has referred particularly to the pervading formulaicness of vernacular poetry."1997, Egbert J. BAKKER, Ahuvia Kahane, Written Voices, Spoken Signs: Tradition, Performance, and the Epic Text. From the entry formulaicness
  • Twitty is the English vernacular for nervous or clownish.1996, John Byrell, Lairs, Urgers and Coat-Tuggers: The Fair Dinkum Oz Guide to the Racetrack, 1st edition, quoted in Green's Dictionary of…. From the entry twitty
  • With Bombay's crammed newspaper market suddenly swamped by a deluge of vernacular eveningers, the city's presses are humming with activity.1992, India Today, page 113. From the entry eveninger
  • On the first day of Shavuot the Ten Commandments were explained to the people homiletically in the vernacular.1975, Israel Zinberg, Old Yiddish Literature from Its Origins to the Haskalah Period. From the entry Shavuot
  • This Saxon manuscript has a dignity which is unique, for it is the oldest existing leech book written in the vernacular.1922, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals, London: Longmans, Green and Co., page 5. From the entry leechbook
  • All this jingoistic bombast, however, was directed toward defending, not so much the national vernacular as the national belles lettres.[1921 [1919], H. L. Mencken, chapter 14, in The American Language, 2nd edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, →OCLC, § 2, page 86. From the entry jingoistic
  • YG, aka Keenon Jackson, using using the Piru vernacular, released a song titled “Bicken Back Bein Bool,” as a single from his album Still Brazy.2017, Joseph E. Morgan, Gregory N. Reish, Tyranny and Music, page 223. From the entry Piru
  • I am here as a vicambulist, someone who pleasantly strolls around cities for recreation, though like you I prefer the vernacular 'to ramble.'2017, Peter van Buren, Hooper's War, Sedona, A.Z.: Luminis Books, →ISBN, page 28. From the entry vicambulist

Meaning of vernacular

  1. noun The language of a people or a national language.
  2. noun Everyday speech or dialect, including colloquialisms, as opposed to standard, literary, liturgical, or scientific idiom.
  3. noun Language unique to a particular group of people.

Full definition of vernacular

Questions about vernacular in a sentence

How do you use vernacular in a sentence?
Vernacular is used as a noun and adjective. For example: “The principal vernacular of the United States is English.”
What is a short sentence with vernacular?
“a vernacular disease”
What does vernacular mean?
Vernacular means the language of a people or a national language.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: vernacular (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use vernacular in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/vernacular. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.