local
Definitions
General English
Accounting
- adjective located in or providing a service for a restricted area
Banking
- adjective referring to a particular area, especially one near where a factory or an office is based
- noun an independent dealer in futures or options or an independent trader on the LIFFE
- noun a branch of a national trade union
Computing
- adjective used to describe a device that is physically attached and close to the controlling computer
- adjective used to describe a variable or argument that is only used in a certain section of a computer program or structure
- adjective used to describe a system with limited access
Electronics
- In a communications network, the resources, such as data and devices, at a given node where a user is present, as opposed to those located elsewhere, which are remote.
- Anything in a given place, area, enclosure, or environment, as opposed to that outside. For example, local noise, a local call, or a LAN.
Information & Library Science
- adjective belonging or relating to the specific area where you live or work
Medical
- adjective confined to one part
Slang
- noun (someone who is) provincial, unsophisticated, boorish. The usage was further popularised by its adoption as a catchphrase for the tv comedy series The League of Gentleman.
Travel
- noun the nearest pub to where someone lives
Origin & History of “local”
Latin locus meant ‘place’ (it became in due course French lieu, acquired by English in the 13th century, and was itself adopted into English as a mathematical term in the 18th century). From it was derived the verb locāre ‘place’, source of English locate (18th c.) and location (16th c.), and the post-classical adjective locālis, from which English gets local. The noun locale is a mock frenchification of an earlier local (18th c.), an adoption of the French use of the adjective local as a noun.
