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Use vernacular in a sentence

Definition of vernacular:

  • (noun) a characteristic language of a particular group (as among thieves);
  • (noun) the everyday speech of the people (as distinguished from literary language)
  • (adjective) being or characteristic of or appropriate to everyday language;

Sentence Examples:

On its creative side the renaissance sought to produce in the vernacular a literature comparable to that of Greece or Rome.

Prodded into action, the man stirred limply, and crawled past them toward the mine, while Heywood, at his heels, growled orders in the vernacular with a voice of dismal ferocity.

Doubtless the well-known opposition to the circulation of the Bible in the vernacular has been exaggerated, but in the fourteenth century it was certainly bitter and furious.

And concerning these he afterwards composed a book in the French vernacular, which said Book of Marvels, with others of the same kind, we do possess.

Having mixed with all classes for twenty eventful years, and speaking the vernacular fluently, I am perhaps entitled to hold an opinion on this much-vexed question.

Indeed, our enthusiasm for vernacular names is like that for Indian names, one-sided: we enumerate only the graceful ones, and ignore the rest.

"It's just over in the northeast eighty," said Sylvia, with a rather conscious parade of her mastery of bucolic vernacular.

In the vernacular he wrote the language he spoke, a language whose natural force and color had become enriched by three centuries of literary use, which was capable, too, of effects of humor and realism impossible in any tongue spoken out of reach of the soil.

Thinking in the vernacular proper to people who keep the little knowledge they have to themselves, the Brigade Major grasped the hated telephone in the left hand and prepared to say a few words (also in the vernacular) to his fellow Staff Officer a mile away.

In those also which profess to explain the right use of vernacular speech, must the same purpose be ever paramount, and the "original design" be kept in view.

No text books in the vernacular will be allowed in any school where children are placed under contract, or where the Government contributes, in any manner whatever, to the support of the school; no oral instruction in the vernacular will be allowed at such schools.

It consists, as we have already hinted, of the ballad poetry of the Border district; but to obtain this vernacular literature was not the work of mere compilation.

That it concedes what has not heretofore been granted, the reading of the Bible in the vernacular in contract schools and its use in explaining the English.

With two "real boys" he was talking; he knew them by the unconscious range vernacular and the perfect candor with which they lied to him about themselves.

The style of Smollett in his first fiction, and in general, has marked dramatic flavor: his is a gift of forthright phrase, a plain, vernacular smack characterizes his diction.

It is almost a shock to hear her use our modern vernacular, and when she relapses into the somewhat stilted language in which she is still accustomed to think, it is a positive relief.

Indeed, I felt my own throat swelling at the poor man's last sigh, it was so deep and natural, and seemed to express a great sorrow, for which there were no words in his homely vernacular.

When written in the vernacular they are not infrequently obscene, for one of the saddest phases of early sentiment here is that it is never innocent; but in English they run to pathos.

In this brief interchange of words in the vernacular of the country we define at once each other's nationality and linguistic abilities.

These letters, written in the vernacular, are a favorite diversion of ours when visiting in foreign lands; and they are very easily done when once you have caught the idioms, for you can always supplement your slender store of words and expressions with choice selections from native authors.

Vernacular poetry, and vernacular composition, of every kind, were almost wholly left to the vulgar; all, who aimed at literary eminence, wrote in the Latin language.

Under his grandson Sigismund Augustus, the public laws and decrees were promulgated in the vernacular tongue of the country.

It is on the contrary a remarkable fact, that the cultivation of the vernacular tongue of the country, and the study of the Latin language in Poland, have ever proceeded with equal steps.

Said the mate, in the peculiar drawling vernacular of the poor whites of the south, extending a hand as cold and hard as an anchor.

One club-footed and club-handed fellow of forbidding visage protested with hand and head that he neither spoke nor understood our vernacular.

Doubtless the well known opposition to the circulation of the Bible in the vernacular has been exaggerated, but in the fourteenth century it was certainly bitter and furious.

Numerous Boer patriots then devised the remedy of preserving the vernacular by raising it to the standard of a written and printed language for official as well as common use.

Thus was perfected what is known as the revival of letters, when classical learning came to enrich and modify the national literatures, if it did temporarily retard the vernacular progress.

When, subsequently, the phonetic values of the letters in the vernacular gradually changed, the Latin pronunciation altered likewise.

The name was then applied to any piece of literature composed in this vernacular instead of in the ancient classical Latin.

Strickland whispered a rather coarse vernacular proverb to the effect that he was abreast of all that was going on, and went into the Court armed with a gut trainer's-whip.

Transmigration, done into the vernacular, and applied with startling directness, was evidently a fascinating subject from the first.

He had committed a serious indiscretion by infringing the general prohibition of vernacular versions of any part of Scripture.

That Alfred, amid the cares of a troublesome kingship, could find time to devote to this work, and realized the importance of vernacular literature, is one of the chief signs of his greatness.

To summarize very briefly the work of the Conference, it recognized in the first place the importance of the vernaculars as the proper medium for instruction in the lower stages of education, whilst maintaining the supremacy of English in the higher stages.

The practical motive, which destroyed the art of so many Latin writers, impaired the literary value of much written in the vernacular.

The innate ideas were not explicit thoughts, but categories employed unwittingly, as people in speaking conform to the grammar of the vernacular without being aware that they do so.

The mass in its simplest form, divested of its gorgeous ceremonial but preserving the general outline, was the service he rendered; and sometimes he added a little instruction in the vernacular.

There is nothing of his remaining in the vernacular; but that he was an English poet we have testimony which, though late, is not to be disregarded.

The girl had realized the import of the speech; but, that she might better understand the words, she had sent them questioningly back in her vernacular for further confirmation.

To quote the vernacular, we had "Some jokes with him," and often stung him to fury, when we would laugh mercilessly at his discomfiture.

The translation is admirable, scarcely a trace is to be seen of French idiom, while the rendering into American vernacular is particularly clever and satisfactory.

His music was written originally to Latin words, but when, after the Reformation, the use of vernacular hymns, was introduced he probably adapted his scores to either language.

Gothic art and the vernacular literatures testify to the intellectual activity of the time, but they did not create the new elements of life that were brought into being by the inventors.

Again he paused, and even while he adhered to a crude vernacular, there was, in the cadence of his voice, a forceful sort of eloquence.

As the summer progressed I wondered more and more at this strange new acquaintance of mine; this rough looking tramp with the manners of a gentleman and the speech, except for a few lapses in the vernacular of the road, of a man of considerable education.

They climbed on his lap and rifled his pockets; and they delighted him by talking in his own vernacular, for they were quick to pick up English words and phrases.

Translations into various vernaculars were immediately called for, and the Latin edition having lightened the translator's labors, they were speedily supplied.

The most commendable feature of this beginning of opera in France was the attention given to the musical treatment of the vernacular of the country.

Prior's had contrived to secure the passage of a bill designed to give a certain latitude to certain rather questionable combinations of capital, known in the vernacular as trusts.

She turned her impassive gaze upon the visitor, who, by way of opening the conversation, taxed his limited knowledge of the vernacular so far as to ask for a little milk.

Though the Buddhist sovereigns published their edicts in the vernaculars, public inscriptions and private official documents continued to be composed in Sanskrit during the last two thousand years.

In the vernacular of the sportsman, birds that may legitimately be shot are divided for convenience into three groups, viz., upland game birds, water fowl, and shore birds.

It was his mission to refine our national taste by opening to American readers, in their own vernacular, new springs of beauty in the literatures of foreign tongues.

It is precisely the plain downright English vernacular which is thoroughly intelligible to everybody who is capable of reading.

Another hindrance to happy poetic description by Burns during these journeys was that he had now forsaken his native vernacular, and taken to writing in English after the mode of the poets of the day.

Why it should only at this time have come to light, why it should have immediately perished, and why none of the persons who took interest enough in it to turn it into the vernacular should have transmitted his copy to posterity, are questions difficult, or rather impossible, to answer.

In the subsequent and vernacular handling of the story the same difference of alternation is at first perceived as that which appears in the Alexander legend.

Much uncertainty prevails on the question when the first sermons in French vernacular were formally composed, and by whom.

There was little or no opportunity for any such use or misuse in the infant vernaculars; there was abundant opportunity in literary Latin.

He was evidently a true gentleman in his patients' eyes, because he was not above stopping to talk to them in their own vernacular about local gossip, and had the reputation of great good nature in regard to the bills of the poor, and they loved his jokes.

The quest was not difficult, and while he awaited his turn he sat against the wall, mildly amused at the scraps of local gossip that came to his ears couched in homely vernacular.

Experts in many outlandish vernaculars had to be found from the start, and he always managed to produce the article required at the shortest notice.

The king was especially eager to secure a literature in the vernacular for his subjects, and himself translated into "simple English" parts of the Holy Bible, and other religious books.

I now realize the object of my being sent at the most plastic period of my life to the vernacular school, where I was to learn my own language, to think my own thoughts and to receive the heritage of our national culture through the medium of our own literature.

She was scrupulous in giving Jane her lessons and trying to correct her vernacular and manners, but the presence of the child grew to be a heavier cross every day.

For I have seen them sustain that the Holy Scriptures ought not to be translated into the French language or any other vernacular tongue.

The fact would prove to be that we have ever been banished from our true vernacular, and have been, all our lives, speaking foreign or strange tongues, from which we have only to recur or come home.

And even now, the word supplied, being in the vernacular, was rather to the benefit than the disadvantage of his hearers.

He conversed well in several languages, readily using either Arabic or French in lieu of his vernacular, and was evidently up to time in regard to the current political topics of the day.

And if the Greeks and Romans, more diligent in the culture of their tongue than we are in ours, found an eloquence in their language only after much labor and industry, are we for this reason, even if our vernacular is not as rich as it might be, to condemn it as something vile and of little value?

Whether such designation should be a Latin name or a vernacular phrase, or both, depends on a number of factors which, as I have said, are not yet fully worked out or appreciated.

Leclerc consulted several Arabic copies of the treatise as well as Latin and vernacular translations, but only a few of these Arabic manuscripts are considered complete.

They also learn the vernacular names of those who are generally spoken of in their Latin forms; at least, they learn a few cases, and hawk them as evidences of erudition.

Among them some persons will be found who will have the inclination and the ability to exhibit European knowledge in the vernacular dialects.

We could not, of course, interfere with their religion, but by a well-judged scale of punishments and rewards, and by instruction given to them in their own vernacular, we endeavored to raise their character by helping them to good conduct, and to a better way of living.

"Nary a thing," answered Bud in the vernacular of the west, "and he's beginning to wonder if anything is going to happen down here."

I would not say that a man who has not a good command of the vernacular of a people cannot be to them a good missionary; for a few of the best missionaries I know, speak the vernacular wretchedly.

His vocabulary and general style, if not more remote from the vernacular, have sometimes a touch of deliberate estrangement from that vernacular which is no doubt of itself a fault.

Among the Greeks, whose literature never suffered a complete eclipse, a similar effort to restore the classical tongue resulted in a kind of compromise; the conventional literary language, which is neither ancient nor modern, differs widely from the vernacular.

"The infant school should be found in every house, the vernacular school in every village and community, the gymnasium in every province, and the university in every kingdom or large province."

And in his quaint vernacular he thus rambled on all the time Kearney was at work, his rude speech being an appropriate symphony to the rasping of the file.

The present condition of discontent with the government has been disseminated among the common people more by these vernacular papers than by any other agency.

I do not forget that poetry and romance in the vernacular were chiefly in the hands of the laity, nor do I depreciate their value as literature.

He was a Chinese of remarkable intelligence, well versed in English as well as in the Chinese vernacular, and was also the master of several dialects.

The fact that the Bible was read in the vernacular, and popular devotional exercises retained in use, saved the Protestant ideas and efforts, despite all persecution, from extinction.

Then ensued a discourse which I cannot render in the vernacular, more's the pity, though I understood it all too well for my comfort.

I, too, am fascinated by the noble language of the Scriptures, and I have used it both in the vernacular and in the sounding Latin of the Vulgate.

I was in a little country place on the coast, where the judicial and magisterial proceedings are of a very primitive character, and where most of the people speak Irish as their vernacular.

He talked the jargon of the agitator with the enthusiasm of a dervish and the vernacular of the mine and the shop and the forge.

The mother, not trained in the lore of schoolyard vernacular, thought the boy in question had escaped a whipping for tearing something and was boasting of his prowess in side-stepping authority.

Bonaparte, ever conciliatory, issued a proclamation to the people, which was translated by one of his savants into the vernacular.

The serious Highlander, not less manly and handsome than his competitor, was gifted with an immeasurable advantage in his familiarity with every phase and inflection of his native vernacular.

He writes in the colloquial Scots, and his words are valuable as presenting us with a reliable example of the Scots vernacular as spoken in educated circles early last century.

The prejudice against translating into the vernacular has had to be overcome in nearly all European countries and will, I suppose, be only a question of time with us.

The necessity of translation ceased as soon as the example of writing in the vernacular had been set, though Latin chronicles continued to be produced as well as French.

The dialect of many of the inscriptions on Attic vases seems to show foreign influence, though in other cases peculiarities may be merely due to the use of a vernacular.

The Anglo-Saxons created a vernacular literature to which the continental nations at that time could show no parallel, and in the branch of literature connected with medicine, in those days based on a knowledge of herbs (when it was not magic), their position was unique.

Though the science was certainly not advanced by their labors, it was saved from total oblivion, and many ancient medical works were preserved in Latin or the vernacular versions.

When conversation with Jerry was unavoidable, Turner noted that she was giving a new and unaccustomed care to her diction, catching herself up from vernacular to an effort at more correct forms.