different between communicate vs language

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin comm?nic?tus, perfect passive participle of comm?nic? (“share, impart; make common”), from comm?nis (“common”). Doublet of commune.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k??mju?n?ke?t/
• Hyphenation: com?mu?ni?cate

Verb

communicate (third-person singular simple present communicates, present participle communicating, simple past and past participle communicated)

1. To impart
   1. (transitive) To impart or transmit (information or knowledge) to someone; to make known, to tell. [from 16th c.]

      It is vital that I communicate this information to you.

   2. (transitive) To impart or transmit (an intangible quantity, substance); to give a share of. [from 16th c.]

      to communicate motion by means of a crank

      • 1660, Jeremy Taylor, The Worthy Communicant; or a Discourse of the Nature, Effects, and Blessings consequent to the worthy receiving of the Lords Supper

        Where God is worshipped, there he communicates his blessings and holy influences.

   3. (transitive) To pass on (a disease) to another person, animal etc. [from 17th c.]

      The disease was mainly communicated via rats and other vermin.

2. To share
   1. (transitive, obsolete) To share (in); to have in common, to partake of. [16th-19th c.]

      We shall now consider those functions of intelligence which man communicates with the higher beasts.

      • 1603, Ben Jonson, Sejanus His Fall

        thousands that communicate our loss

   2. (intransitive, Christianity) To receive the bread and wine at a celebration of the Eucharist; to take part in Holy Communion. [from 16th c.]
      • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society 2012, p. 148:

        The ‘better sort’ might communicate on a separate day; and in some parishes even the quality of the communion wine varied with the social quality of the recipients.

   3. (transitive, Christianity) To administer the Holy Communion to (someone). [from 16th c.]
      • 1660, Jeremy Taylor, The Worthy Communicant; or a Discourse of the Nature, Effects, and Blessings consequent to the worthy receiving of the Lords Supper

        She [the church] […] may communicate him.

   4. (intransitive) To express or convey ideas, either through verbal or nonverbal means; to have intercourse, to exchange information. [from 16th c.]

      Many deaf people communicate with sign language.

      I feel I hardly know him; I just wish he'd communicate with me a little more.

   5. (intransitive) To be connected with (another room, vessel etc.) by means of an opening or channel. [from 16th c.]

      The living room communicates with the back garden by these French windows.

Hyponyms

• See also Thesaurus:communicate

Related terms

• communication
• communicator
• excommunicate
• communion

Translations

Latin

Verb

comm?nic?te

1. second-person plural present active imperative of comm?nic?

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: l?ng?gw?j, IPA^(key): /?læ??w?d??/
  • (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): (see /æ/ raising) [?le???w?d??]
• Hyphenation: lan?guage

Etymology 1

From Middle English langage, language, from Old French language, from Vulgar Latin *lingu?ticum, from Latin lingua (“tongue, speech, language”), from Old Latin dingua (“tongue”), from Proto-Indo-European *dn???wéh?s (“tongue, speech, language”). Displaced native Old English ?eþ?ode.

Noun

language (countable and uncountable, plural languages)

1. (countable) A body of words, and set of methods of combining them (called a grammar), understood by a community and used as a form of communication.
   • 1867, Report on the Systems of Deaf-Mute Instruction pursued in Europe, quoted in 1983 in History of the College for the Deaf, 1857-1907 ?ISBN, page 240:

     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.
2. (uncountable) The ability to communicate using words.

3. (uncountable) A sublanguage: the slang of a particular community or jargon of a particular specialist field.
   • 1991, Stephen Fry, The Liar, p. 35:

     And ‘blubbing’... Blubbing went out with ‘decent’ and ‘ripping’. Mind you, not a bad new language to start up. Nineteen-twenties schoolboy slang could be due for a revival.

4. (countable, uncountable, figuratively) The expression of thought (the communication of meaning) in a specified way; that which communicates something, as language does.
   • 2001, Eugene C. Kennedy, Sara C. Charles, On Becoming a Counselor ?ISBN:

     A tale about themselves [is] told by people with help from the universal languages of their eyes, their hands, and even their shirting feet.
5. (countable, uncountable) A body of sounds, signs and/or signals by which animals communicate, and by which plants are sometimes also thought to communicate.
   • 1983, The Listener, volume 110, page 14:

     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.

   • 2009, Animals in Translation, page 274:

     Prairie dogs use their language to refer to real dangers in the real world, so it definitely has meaning.

6. (computing, countable) A computer language; a machine language.
   • 2015, Kent D. Lee, Foundations of Programming Languages ?ISBN, page 94

     In fact pointers are called references in these languages to distinguish them from pointers in languages like C and C++.

7. (uncountable) Manner of expression.
   • 1782, William Cowper, Hope

     Their language simple, as their manners meek, […]

8. (uncountable) The particular words used in a speech or a passage of text.

9. (uncountable) Profanity.

Synonyms

• (form of communication): see Thesaurus:language
• (vocabulary of a particular field): see Thesaurus:jargon
• (computer language): computer language, programming language, machine language
• (particular words used): see Thesaurus:wording

Hypernyms

• medium

Hyponyms

• See Category:en:Languages

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Verb

language (third-person singular simple present languages, present participle languaging, simple past and past participle languaged)

1. (rare, now nonstandard or technical) To communicate by language; to express in language.

   • Others were languaged in such doubtful expressions that they have a double sense.

See also

• bilingual
• lexis
• linguistics
• multilingual
• term
• trilingual
• word

Etymology 2

Alteration of languet.

Noun

language (plural languages)

1. A languet, a flat plate in or below the flue pipe of an organ.

References

• language at OneLook Dictionary Search
• language in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• language in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

French

Noun

language m (plural languages)

1. Archaic spelling of langage.

Middle English

Noun

language (plural languages)

1. Alternative form of langage

Middle French

Alternative forms

• langage
• langaige
• languaige

Etymology

From Old French language.

Noun

language m (plural languages)

1. language (style of communicating)

Related terms

• langue

Descendants

• French: langage
  • Haitian Creole: langaj
    • ? English: langaj
  • Mauritian Creole: langaz

Old French

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Vulgar Latin *lingu?ticum, from Classical Latin lingua (“tongue, language”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /lan??ad???/

Noun

language f (oblique plural languages, nominative singular language, nominative plural languages)

1. language (style of communicating)

Related terms

• langue, lingue

Descendants

• ? Middle English: language
  • English: language
• Middle French: language
  • French: langage
    • Haitian Creole: langaj
      • ? English: langaj
    • Mauritian Creole: langaz
• ? Old Spanish: lenguage