How to Use lingua franca in a Sentence

lingua franca

noun
Definition of lingua francanext
  • English is used as a lingua franca among many airline pilots.
  • Binary, our digital lingua franca, represents numbers using only the two digits zero and 1.
    — Quanta Magazine, 9 Aug. 2024
  • And the word nyam, to eat, is thought to come from Wolof, a lingua franca in West Africa.
    — Simon Romero Alejandro Cegarra, New York Times, 11 Oct. 2023
  • It’s sort of the lingua franca of fashion, there’s so many of them.
    — Nicole Phelps, Vogue, 19 June 2021
  • Tsotsil—the language of the Chamulas—is the lingua franca.
    — Peter Canby, The New Yorker, 10 Jan. 2022
  • Both of your parents are artists, and art-making was the lingua franca of your household.
    — Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 9 July 2024
  • Workday is the lingua franca of skills for the global workforce.
    — Pete Schlampp, Fortune, 17 Feb. 2023
  • First used to send messages over land in 1844, Morse code outlived the telegraph age by becoming the lingua franca of the sea.
    — Saahil Desai, The Atlantic, 2 Mar. 2024
  • In its formative years, the soul of the Catholic Church, like that of Rome and its empire, was conformed forever to the shape of its lingua franca.
    — Nicholas Frankovich, National Review, 2 Jan. 2021
  • In a room crackling with languages, culture was the lingua franca.
    — Francesco Lagnese, Town & Country, 23 Oct. 2020
  • Greek was the lingua franca of the time and of historian Flavius Josephus, who was born around C.E. 37.
    — Lynn Whidden, Scientific American, 26 July 2024
  • Make your way to Nagu, a picturesque village where Swedish is still the lingua franca, then take a late-afternoon boat back to Turku.
    — J.s. Marcus, WSJ, 17 Aug. 2022
  • English is the lingua franca here but most of those living in the official camp walls and in the overspill areas are Afghan.
    — 1843, 12 Mar. 2020
  • His early work was squarely in the lingua franca of the platform: short, comedic videos synced to popular songs.
    — Damian Garde, STAT, 25 Mar. 2022
  • By contrast, Malone and Wallen just seem to be drawing on their own lingua franca.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 11 June 2024
  • Quechua was the lingua franca of the Inca Empire, which stretched from what is now southern Colombia to central Chile.
    — Franklin Briceño and Matt O'Brien, The Christian Science Monitor, 13 May 2022
  • Lawyers should adapt their language to the lingua franca of business and society.
    — Mark A. Cohen, Forbes, 18 May 2021
  • But the narrative also lingers long on the future of the current lingua franca of our age, English.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 16 Aug. 2010
  • Even better, Goldstein embraces the lingua franca of the lab, and the reader learns a thing or three about epigenetics along the way.
    — Susan Kaplan Carlton, BostonGlobe.com, 22 June 2018
  • Thanks to this new law, the only lingua franca in Catalonia will be Catalan.
    — Itxu Díaz, National Review, 25 Nov. 2020
  • Charles gave a speech in pidgin English (the lingua franca here in 🇸🇧) to great applause at the football stadium.
    — Amy MacKelden, Harper's BAZAAR, 25 Nov. 2019
  • But family ties and the allure of a city where Spanglish is the lingua franca has nonetheless dawn many.
    — Christine Armario, Washington Post, 11 July 2022
  • That’s because, for better of worse, English has become the world’s lingua franca.
    — Annabelle Timsit, Quartz, 5 Nov. 2019
  • In a new country, with a new language to learn, the Van Halen sons, Eddie and his older brother, Alex, turned to music as their lingua franca.
    — Jim Farber, New York Times, 6 Oct. 2020
  • Even in Ghana, where the lingua franca is English, knowing how to use smartphones and apps can be a challenge for newcomers.
    — Francis Kokutse, Fortune, 20 May 2024
  • But this sort of talk is a lingua franca for the sensitive teens and young adults who populate wholesome romances.
    — Time, 11 Aug. 2023
  • More than just cute pictures, these digital icons are a lingua franca for the digital age.
    — Zak Jason, Wired, 16 Feb. 2021
  • On the internet, the lingua franca of millennials and Gen Z is brevity.
    — Jason Parham, Wired, 19 Aug. 2020
  • For fifteen years now the lingua franca among men Vernon’s age—strangers, pals, business acquaintances, anyone who’d been in high school in 1941—was war talk.
    — Tom Hanks, Harper’s Magazine , 5 Jan. 2023
  • Being an adept project ambassador is a requirement — in French, the lingua franca of this nation of many African languages.
    — Paul Sereno, Chicago Tribune, 25 Sep. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'lingua franca.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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