Lingua-Franca

Lingua-Franca, the corrupt Italian which has been employed, since the period of the Genoese and Venetian supremacy, as the language of commercial intercourse in the Mediterranean, especially the Levant. Any language which serves a similar purpose, as, for instance, Swahili and Hausa in Africa, and the Chinook jargon in the north-west of the United States, is called generically a lingua-franca. Compare 'pigeon English,' under CHINA.