lingua

At some point, we reached a moment in our culture where being funny became the kind of lingua franca.

From Salon ● Jul. 5, 2026

This entails programs to promote standard Chinese as the national lingua franca, instill pride in Chinese cultural heritage and exert stronger central control over regions with large ethnic-minority populations such as Tibet and Xinjiang.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 12, 2026

His Russian has improved in prison, where it is a lingua franca among the inmates.

From Barron's ● Jan. 30, 2026

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.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 19, 2025

The songs and sounds they’ve absorbed are part of western musical style, and are now part of the musical lingua franca or the music that is “normal” for them.

From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin

Reminded that technically the war was over for Russia, Kisselev confessed a "lapsus linguae."

From Time Magazine Archive

Miss Sallianna wound up by saying, that it would be an affair of rare and opprobrious interest; and, as a comedy, would be positively deleterious, which was probably a lapsus linguae for "delicious."

From The Last of the Foresters Or, Humors on the Border; A story of the Old Virginia Frontier by Cooke, John Esten

Tom grinned—but seeing no one stir, "Another lapsus linguae, sir!"

From The Canadian Elocutionist by Howard, Anna Kelsey

In 1532 appeared his Thesaurus linguae Latinae, a dictionary of Latin words and phrases, upon which for two years he had toiled incessantly, with no other assistance than that of Thierry of Beauvais.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 7 "Equation" to "Ethics" by Various

Afterward Mr. Colfax, who was a noted speaker, told me that whenever he made a lapsus linguae, if it amused the audience he never attempted to correct it.

From Memories of a Musical Life by Mason, William