local

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”).

adj

1. From or in a nearby location.
   Holonyms: statal, national, federal, unional, supranational, global
   We prefer local produce.
   A farmer could place an order for a new tractor part by text message and pay for it by mobile money-transfer. A supplier many miles away would then take the part to the local matternet station for airborne dispatch via drone. 2012-12-01, “An internet of airborne things”, in The Economist, volume 405, number 8813, page 3 (Technology Quarterly)
2. (computing, of a resource) Connected directly to a particular computer, processor, etc.; able to be accessed offline.
   local disk drive
   local file
   The panel shows both local and remote sites.
3. (computing, of a variable or identifier) Having limited scope (either lexical or dynamic); only being accessible within a certain portion of a program.
4. (mathematics, not comparable, of a condition or state) Applying to each point in a space rather than the space as a whole.
5. (medicine) Of or pertaining to a restricted part of an organism.
   local lesion
   The patient didn't want to be sedated, so we applied only local anesthesia.
6. Descended from an indigenous population.
   Hawaiian Pidgin is spoken by the local population.

noun

1. A person who lives near a given place.
   It's easy to tell the locals from the tourists.
   Taunton station is busy - even more so when the inbound working of my Bristol train arrives, laden with the usual mix of 'staycationers' and locals. December 2 2020, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 66
2. A branch of a nationwide organization such as a trade union.
   I'm in the TWU, too. Local 6.
3. (rail transport) Clipping of local train.
   The expresses skipped my station, so I had to take a local.
4. (Britain) One's nearest or regularly frequented public house or bar.
   I got barred from my local, so I've started going all the way into town for a drink.
   As they take me to my local down the street. 2010, “Nothing”, in Science & Faith, performed by The Script
5. (programming) A locally scoped identifier.
   Functional programming languages usually don't allow changing the immediate value of locals once they've been initialized, unless they're explicitly marked as being mutable.
   Globals are visible anywhere in your application, whereas locals are visible only in the function in which they're declared. 2012, Cesar Otero, Rob Larsen, Professional JQuery, page 25
6. (US, slang, journalism) An item of news relating to the place where the newspaper is published.
7. (colloquial, medicine) Clipping of local anesthetic.
   Well, Mr. Dalton, you may add nine staples to your dossier of thirty‐one broken bones, two bullet wounds, nine puncture wounds and four steel screws. That’s an estimate, of course. I’ll give you a local. 1989, Road House, page 39
8. (finance) An independent trader who acts for themselves rather than on behalf of investors.
   On most futures exchanges, there are two major types of futures traders/members: commission brokers and locals. 2009, R. Stafford Johnson, Bond Evaluation, Selection, and Management, page 316
9. (fandom slang, derogatory) A Twitter user who is not a part of Stan Twitter.
   Her camera roll is filled with pictures and videos of her idol, she doesn't let any of her friends see her account because "no locals allowed", […] 2018, Max Ghasserani, "Spill The Tea On A Sister Skinny Legend", The Investigator (Green Valley High School, Henderson, NV), October 2018, page 25
   Locals are characterised by their seeming lack of involvement or ~expertise~ on the platform. 16 October 2018, Fergal Smiddy, “The 6 Types of People You Meet on Twitter”, in University Express, University College Cork, Ireland, page 11
   Heck, even locals sometimes use GIFs of her when they feel like tweeting with taste. 2019, Avin Abelardo, "Deep Dive Into The World Of Troll Twitter Memes", Echoes (University of the Philippines), February/March 2019, page 60

adv

1. In the local area; within a city, state, country, etc.
   It's never been more important to buy local.
   Coca-Cola, for example, shifted its stance, unsuccessfully, between “think global, act global” and “think local, act local” during the tenures of three different CEOs in the late 1990s and early 2000s. 2016, Vinod K. Jain, Global Strategy: Competing in the Connected Economy, page 122