metalanguage
noun
metalanguage is a noun meaning “Any language or vocabulary of terms used to describe or analyze a language or linguistic process” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled M-E-T-A-L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E, and it appears about once in every 28 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of metalanguage is metalanguages.
What does metalanguage mean?
noun
- 1
Any language or vocabulary of terms used to describe or analyze a language or linguistic process.
- 2
Any similar language used to define a programming language
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce metalanguage?
- UK
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-uk-metalanguage.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of metalanguage
- metalanguages plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is metalanguage?
Metalanguage appears about once in every 28 million words in written English, the 159,707th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Metalanguage in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense linguistical term:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | métalangage |
| German | Metasprache |
| Portuguese | metalinguagem |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does metalanguage come from?
From meta- + language.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).