Localism
noun ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Attachment to a particular local place; feelings or policies which emphasize local phenomena. uncountable
"Localism may strengthen not just the selfless (eg, people who want to build a village hall) but also the selfish (who want to stop any new building in their backyard)."
- 2 a partiality for some particular place wordnet
- 3 A linguistic feature that is unique to a locality. countable, uncountable
"These documents contain occasional localism, typically references to other operating systems."
- 4 a phrase or pronunciation that is peculiar to a particular locality wordnet
- 5 The belief that language functions are localized to various parts of the brain. uncountable
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- 6 An approach to understanding expressions in terms of position and movement (sometimes abstract, e.g. one who is hungry is in a notional "space" of hunger). uncountable
"Other theoretical approaches that stress the primacy of space or spatial meaning in language with respect to other domains or meanings are localism and case grammar. In localism, spatial expressions are considered the most important category in the lexicon and in grammar."
Example
More examples"Localism may strengthen not just the selfless (eg, people who want to build a village hall) but also the selfish (who want to stop any new building in their backyard)."
Etymology
From local + -ism.
More for "localism"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.