lingua franca

[frang-kuh]

noun

plural

lingua francas, linguae francae 

1. any language that is widely used as a means of communication among speakers of other languages.

2. (initial capital letter),  the Italian-Provençal jargon (with elements of Spanish, French, Greek, Arabic, and Turkish) formerly widely used in eastern Mediterranean ports.

lingua franca

¹

/ ˈlɪŋɡwə ˈfræŋkə /

noun

1. a language used for communication among people of different mother tongues

2. a hybrid language containing elements from several different languages used in this way

3. any system of communication providing mutual understanding

Lingua Franca

²

noun

1. a particular lingua franca spoken from the time of the Crusades to the 18th century in the ports of the Mediterranean, based on Italian, Spanish, French, Arabic, Greek, and Turkish

Word History and Origins

Origin of lingua franca¹

1670–80; < Italian: literally, Frankish tongue

Word History and Origins

Origin of lingua franca¹

C17: Italian, literally: Frankish tongue

Example Sentences

Somalia is to introduce Swahili, the lingua franca of East Africa, to its national curriculum, the president has announced.

Read more on BBC

It’s not a matter of if but when: I live in a majority Latino city, near a Latino supermarket on a street where the lingua franca is Spanish.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Sport was the exception to the rule that all things American were the world’s cultural lingua franca.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

The talk was in Spanish, an unremarkable fact given the language has been the lingua franca on most construction sites in Southern California for decades.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Most are published in languages other than English, the lingua franca of science, and only a small fraction of them are indexed in international citation and index systems.

Read more on Science Magazine

Related Words

• accent 
• dialect 
• expression 
• jargon 
• prose 
• sound 
• speech 
• style 
• terminology 
• vocabulary 
• voice 
• word 
• wording