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The term Koine is generally used as a label for designating the low variety of written Med.Gk., in opposition to classicizing or atticizing Greek, i.e. Koine means a less literary and less elaborated written variety. Since the term is applied to a broad spectrum of different registers, the subdivisions ‘literary’ and ‘popular Koine’ are also in use. By and large, Koine corresponds with ‘middle’ and ‘low style’, whereas classicizing Greek with ‘high style’. In contrast to Anc.Gk. where Koine refers also to (varieties of) the spoken language, for Byzantine Greek a third term is traditionally used, ‘vernacular’ which applies to the spoken language and even more so to the literary language based in its morphology on the spoken language (hence ‘Vernacular literature’, appearing from the 12th/13th c. on). The Koine variety is distinct from both the classicizing language and the vernacular; on a scale with two opposite ends (atticizing and spoken Greek), Koine is located in the middle. Accordingly, Koine can be defined as the written variety that avoids both distinctively atticizing (and in poetry, homerizing) as well as distinctively vernacular elements, in particular regarding morphology.