subs. phr. (colloquial).—Specifically the corrupt Italian (dating from the period of the Genoese and Venetian supremacy) employed as the language of commercial intercourse with the Levant. [Other examples are Hindustani in India, Swahilli and Houssa in Africa, Pidgin in China, and Chinook in America.]
1619. J. WILSON, Belphegor, iii. 5. Mat. What kind of people are ye? Rod. A hotch-potch of all tongues, nations, and languages. We speak the LINGUA FRANCA, keep open house, etc.
1675. DRYDEN, Limberham; or, the Kind Keeper, i. 1. Trick. English! away you fop: ’tis a kind of LINGUA FRANCA, as I have heard the merchants call it.
1684. E. EVERARD, trans. Tavernier’s Japan, ii. 41. He spoke half Portuguese, half Italian, which being a kind of LINGUA FRANCA, some of the Horsemen made a shift to understand him.
1755. LORD CHESTERFIELD, Letters (1777), Bk. ii. No. xcviii., Misc. Wks., Vol. ii. p. 431. How does my godson go on with his little LINGUA FRANCA, or jumble of different languages? Fear no Babel confusion.
1787. BECKFORD, Italy, ii. (1834), 246. Talking a strange LINGUA-FRANCA, composed of three or four different languages.
1825. SCOTT, The Talisman, xiii. The LINGUA FRANCA, mutually understood by Christians and Saracens.
1860. W. H. RUSSELL, My Diary in India, i. 28. Sat three men smoking vigorously and talking in LINGUA FRANCA.
1877. F. BURNABY, On horseback through Asia Minor (1878), vi. 34. ‘What do you want?’ he asked in LINGUA FRANCA, that undefined mixture of Italian, French, Greek, and Spanish, which is spoken throughout the Mediterranean.
