Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, including, or expressed in several languages; multilingual.
  • adjective Using or able to use several languages.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective of or pertaining to multiple languages; multilingual
  • adjective able to use multiple languages

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Starting with Japanese and passing through Chinese, German, South Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, French, and Spanish to Hindi, the polylingual list represents national languages of the most productive automobile-manufacturing countries in the world, aside from the United States, which would by the way currently rank third.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • Starting with Japanese and passing through Chinese, German, South Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, French, and Spanish to Hindi, the polylingual list represents national languages of the most productive automobile-manufacturing countries in the world, aside from the United States, which would by the way currently rank third.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • Kittehs can speak Latin, Lolspeek adn Dubl Dutch, mayking ICHC cheezfrends kittehlingual lyke polylingual, but wib fewer crackers.

    u unnerstand internetz nao? - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger? 2008

  • Anyway, given these polylingual cultures, I don't think people tend to have the same attitude toward "you should all speak English".

    English please Professor in Training 2008

  • For charisma, Tettamanzi cannot measure up to Martini, a polylingual Jesuit, Biblical scholar, preacher and world traveler.

    Periscope 2008

  • Juan de Oliver, the pioneer Franciscan Tagalist was still living and available for consultation, and the polylingual Jesuit, Francisco

    Doctrina Christiana The first book printed in the Philippines, Manila, 1593. Anonymous 1951

  • They sent some of these boys through comparison dictionaries in foreign tongues and then had their language checked by specialists who were truly polylingual.

    The Fourth R George Oliver Smith 1946

  • They had sworn themselves to secrecy, had heard MacLeod's story with a polylingual burst of pious or blasphemous exclamations, and then they had scattered, each to the work assigned him.

    The Mercenaries H. Beam Piper 1934

  • He also explores Mendelssohn's changing awareness of his religious heritage, Wagner's virulent anti-Semitic attack on Mendelssohn's music, the composer's complex relationship with his sister Fanny Hensel, herself a child prodigy and prolific composer, his avocation as a painter and draughtsman, and his remarkable, polylingual correspondence with the cultural elite of his time.

    AvaxHome RSS: 2009

  • Throughout there is a fierce joy in polylingual wordplay, as well as a litany of complaints about maladies bodily and psychological.

    Books news, reviews and author interviews | guardian.co.uk 2009

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