local
/ˈloʊ.kl̩/adjective, noun, adverb
local is spelled L-O-C-A-L: 5 letters and 2 syllables. It appears 269 times per million words in written English, the 356th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As an adjective, local means “From or in a nearby location” (English Wiktionary, September 2026).
How many letters and syllables are in local?
| Letters | 5: L-O-C-A-L |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 269 times per million words; the 356th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Rhymes with | |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is local?
Local appears 269 times per million words in written English, the 356th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce local?
- UK /ˈləʊ.kl̩/
- US /ˈloʊ.kl̩/
Local has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-local.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with local
Also written: lo-cal (one word or two).
Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with local?
One word on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as local from its last stressed vowel (/oʊkl/):
Spelled with the same letters in another order: alloc.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of local
- more local comparative
- most local superlative
- loc.
- locals plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does local mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
From or in a nearby location.
We prefer local produce.
- 2
Connected directly to a particular computer, processor, etc.; able to be accessed offline.
local disk drive
- 3
Having limited scope (either lexical or dynamic); only accessible within a certain portion of a program.
- 4
Satisfied by at least one open neighborhood of every point.
A Hausdorff space satisfying local compactness need not be (globally) compact!
- 5
Satisfied by arbitrarily small open neighborhoods of every point.
- 6
Satisfied by every finitely generated subgroup.
- 7
Such that the following conditions are equivalent: (1) P holds for R (M); (2) P holds for the localization R_p (M_p) for all prime ideals p of R; (3) P holds for the localization R_m (M_m) for all maximal ideals m of R.
Flatness is a local property.
- 8
Detectable from the behavior of the normalizers of the nontrivial p-subgroups.
noun
- 1
A person who lives in or near a given place.
It's easy to tell the locals from the tourists.
- 2
A branch of a nationwide organization such as a trade union.
I'm in the TWU, too. Local 6.
- 3
Clipping of local train.
The expresses skipped my station, so I had to take a local.
- 4
UKOne'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.
- 5
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.
- 6
USslangAn item of news relating to the place where the newspaper is published.
- 7
colloquialClipping of local anesthetic.
- 8
An independent trader who acts for themselves rather than on behalf of investors.
adverb
- 1
In the local area; within a city, state, country, etc.
It's never been more important to buy local.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate local?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of local: loc..
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Local in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | local , section |
| German | lokal, örtlich , Ortsverband , Ortsmann, Einheimischer , Stammkneipe |
| Portuguese | local , habitante local, morador local |
| Spanish | local, lugareño |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does local come from?
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.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).