The third [instrumentality for communication] [uttered or spoken signs] is, as things actually are in the world, infinitely the most important: insomuch that, in ordinary use, “language” means utterance, and utterance only […] language, for the purposes of this discussion, is the body of uttered and audible signs by which in human society thought is principally expressed, gesture and writing being its subordinates and auxiliaries.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.2