vernacular

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The standard native language of a country or locality.
2. n. The everyday language spoken by a people as distinguished from the literary language. See Synonyms at dialect.
3. n. A variety of such everyday language specific to a social group or region: the vernaculars of New York City.
4. n. The idiom of a particular trade or profession: in the legal vernacular.
5. n. An idiomatic word, phrase, or expression.
6. n. The common, nonscientific name of a plant or animal.
7. adj. Native to or commonly spoken by the members of a particular country or region.
8. adj. Using the native language of a region, especially as distinct from the literary language: a vernacular poet.
9. adj. Relating to or expressed in the native language or dialect.
10. adj. Of or being an indigenous building style using local materials and traditional methods of construction and ornament, especially as distinguished from academic or historical architectural styles.
11. adj. Occurring or existing in a particular locality; endemic: a vernacular disease.
12. adj. Relating to or designating the common, nonscientific name of a plant or animal.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Native; indigenous; belonging to the country of one's birth; belonging to the speech that one naturally acquires: as, English is our vernacular language. The word is always, or almost always, used of the native language or ordinary idiom of a place.
2. Hence, specifically, characteristic of a locality: as, vernacular architecture.
3. n. One's mother-tongue; the native idiom of a place; by extension, the language of a particular calling.

Wiktionary

1. n. The language of a people, a national language.
2. n. Everyday speech, including colloquialisms, as opposed to literary or liturgical language.
3. n. Language unique to a particular group of people; jargon, argot.
4. n. The indigenous language of a people, into which the words of the Roman Catholic mass are translated.
5. adj. Of or pertaining to everyday language.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Belonging to the country of one's birth; one's own by birth or nature; native; indigenous; -- now used chiefly of language.
2. n. The vernacular language; one's mother tongue; often, the common forms of expression in a particular locality, opposed to literary or learned forms.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a characteristic language of a particular group (as among thieves)
2. adj. being or characteristic of or appropriate to everyday language
3. n. the everyday speech of the people (as distinguished from literary language)