in someone's vocabulary

in someone's vocabulary

1. (chiefly in the negative) A concept that (someone) would normally consider.
   • 1964, Ivor John Carnegie Brown, Dickens in His Time, page 178:

     Sin is a word which occurs scantily in his vocabulary. Crime was what horrified him, an offence against God because it was an offence against man and especially against children.

   • 2018, Egerton Ryerson Young, Three Boys in the Wild North Land, page 71:

     Failure, however, was not in his vocabulary.

   • 2019, Jim Sacia, Not in my Wildest Dreams: Memoirs of a Veteran FBI Agent:

     It was back-breaking work, but “unemployment” wasn't in my vocabulary, and as long as I could work, I would.

   • 2022, Lindsey Fitzharris, The Facemaker, page 67:

     Black would soon learn that the word "impossible" was not in Gillie's vocabulary".

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see in,‎ vocabulary.
   • 2016, Janet L. Patterson, “Child Language Disorders Across Languages, Cultural Contexts and Syndromes”, in Janet L. Patterson, Barbara L. Rodríguez, editors, Multilingual Perspectives on Child Language Disorders:

     Although John has equivalent terms in French and English for some items, he knows some words only in English, and other words only in French, with no equivalent English word in his vocabulary.

When not used literally, the phrase is almost always used negatively, as something not being in someone's vocabulary.