local

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   relating to or applicable to or concerned with the administration of a city or town or district rather than a larger area

   local taxes

2. 2
   adj

   affecting only a restricted part or area of the body

   local anesthesia

3. 3
   adj

   of or belonging to or characteristic of a particular locality or neighborhood

   local customs

4. 4
   noun

   public transport consisting of a bus or train that stops at all stations or stops

   the local seemed to take forever to get to New York

5. 5
   adj

   From or in a nearby location.

   We prefer local produce.

6. 6
   adj

   Connected directly to a particular computer, processor, etc.; able to be accessed offline.

   local disk drive

7. 7
   adj

   Applying to or satisfied by substructures understood as "near points;" in particular:

   A Hausdorff space satisfying local compactness need not be (globally) compact!

8. 8
   adj

   Detectable from the behavior of substructures understood to be "near points;" in particular:

   Flatness is a local property.

Etymology

From Middle English local, from Late Latin locālis (“belonging to a place”), possibly also via Old French local; ultimately from Latin locus (“a place”). The ring-theoretic senses derive from Krull, who first referred to Noetherian commutative rings with a unique maximal ideal as "Stellenring" (Stellen (“place”) + ring) in 1938. The term was inspired by algebraic geometry, where local rings encode information about the behavior of curves (surfaces, etc.) at points; hence, describe "local" behavior.