local

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Belonging to or found in the area where you live.

   We prefer to buy local produce from nearby farms.

2. 2
   adj

   Relating to a particular town or district rather than a whole country.

   The local council decided to build a new park.

3. 3
   adj

   Affecting only one part of the body.

   The dentist gave me a local anaesthetic before the procedure.

4. 4
   noun

   A bus or train that stops at every station.

   The local seemed to take forever to reach the city.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Local entered English in the late Middle English period and comes ultimately from Latin locus, “place.” It first meant “concerned with place or position”; from the late 17th century it referred more specifically to a limited area, and by the mid-19th century locals could mean that area's inhabitants.

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.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary