[-ITY.]
1. The fact of belonging or adhering to the vernacular or native language.
1765. Crit. Rev., XIX. April, 251. This theatrical vernacularity seems, for very obvious reasons, to have been lost between the years 1638 and 1665.
[1842. Sir W. Hamilton, in Reid’s Wks., I. 100/2, note. As the expressions are scientific, it is perhaps no loss that their technical precision is guarded by their non-vernacularity.]
1847. De Quincey, in Tait’s Mag., XIV. 579. The merit, which justly you ascribe to Swift, is vernacularity; he never forgets his mother-tongue in exotic forms.
2. A vernacularism.
1867. Carlyle, E. Irving, in Remin. (1881), I. 335. Rustic Annandale begins it, with its homely honesties, rough vernacularities, safe, innocently kind.
