L1

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A mother tongue; someone's native language; own language.

    "This advantage was pertinent in the Hong Kong context where English is largely an L2 language, although would not be expected to be as large in an L1 context."

  2. 2
    Abbreviation of Lagrange point 1, located between the larger and smaller objects along a line connecting the two. abbreviation, alt-of
  3. 3
    Short for first level in various contexts.; The first-level cache of a processor, closer to the processor than the second-level cache. uncountable

    "Writing of the L1 is performed one cache line at a time and can be 64 bytes or 32 bytes."

  4. 4
    Short for first level in various contexts.; The physical layer in the seven-layer OSI network model. uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms
first languagemother tongue

Antonyms

All antonyms
l2

Example

More examples

"This advantage was pertinent in the Hong Kong context where English is largely an L2 language, although would not be expected to be as large in an L1 context."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Language 1 (“first language”).

Etymology 2

From Level 1.

Related phrases

lagrange pointmother tongue

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.