vernacular | Search Online Etymology Dictionary

101 entries found.

c. 1600, "native to a country," from Latin vernaculus "domestic, native, indigenous; pertaining to home-born slaves," from verna "home-born slave, native," a word of Etruscan origin. Used in English in the sense of Latin vernacula vocabula, in reference to language. As a noun, "native speech or language of a place," from 1706.

For human speech is after all a democratic product, the creation, not of scholars and grammarians, but of unschooled and unlettered people. Scholars and men of education may cultivate and enrich it, and make it flower into the beauty of a literary language; but its rarest blooms are grafted on a wild stock, and its roots are deep-buried in the common soil. [Logan Pearsall Smith, "Words and Idioms," 1925]

fashious (adj.)

1530s, from vernacular French fâcheux, from fastidieux (see fastidious).

hood (n.3)

shortened form of neighborhood, by 1987, African-American vernacular.

signifier (n.)

1530s, agent noun from signify. In African-American vernacular use by 1962.

dat

representing the pronunciation of that in West Indian, Irish, or African-American vernacular speech, from 1680s.

superfly (adj.)

"excellent, superior," 1971, originally African-American vernacular, from super- + slang sense of fly (adj.).

do-rag (n.)

by 1973 (said in DAS to date to 1960s), African-American vernacular, from hairdo + rag (n.1).

ho (n.)

by 1993, American English slang, representing an African-American vernacular pronunciation of whore.

lordy (interj.)

1832, in imitation of African-American vernacular; extended form of Lord (n.) as an interjection.

skanky (adj.)

"ugly, unattractive" (originally of women), by 1965, African-American vernacular; see skank.

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