while the latter was seen as debased, degenerate, or corrupted. The word Latin is now understood by default to mean "Classical Latin"; for example, modern Latin textbooks almost exclusively teach Classical Latin.

Cicero and his contemporaries of the late republic referred to the Latin language, in contrast to other languages such as Greek, as lingua latina or sermo latinus. They distinguished the common vernacular, however, as Vulgar Latin (sermo vulgaris