Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A particular neighborhood, place, or district.
  • noun The fact or quality of having position in space.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The condition of being in a place; position or situation in general; the immediate relation of an object to a place.
  • noun Any part of space; a situation; position; particularly, a geographical place or situation: as, a healthy locality; the locality of a mineral, plant, or animal. Compare habitat, 2.
  • noun Legal restriction as to place or location.
  • noun In phrenology, the faculty to which is ascribed the power of remembering the details of places and the location of objects.
  • noun In phytogeography, the approximate geographic position of an individual specimen: less definite than. station.
  • noun In psychology, a phrase loosely formed on the analogy of ‘sense of space,’ ‘sense of time,’ etc., to denote the power of cutaneous localization, that is, of referring a cutaneous stimulus to the area of the skin to which it is applied.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The state, or condition, of belonging to a definite place, or of being contained within definite limits.
  • noun Position; situation; a place; a spot; esp., a geographical place or situation, as of a mineral or plant.
  • noun Limitation to a county, district, or place.
  • noun (Phren.) The perceptive faculty concerned with the ability to remember the relative positions of places.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The fact or quality of having a position in space.
  • noun pl. The features or surroundings of a particular place.
  • noun The situation or position of an object.
  • noun An area or district considered as the site of certain activities; a neighbourhood.
  • noun Limitation to a county, district, or place.
  • noun dated The perceptive faculty concerned with the ability to remember the relative positions of places.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a surrounding or nearby region

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French localité, from Late Latin locālitās, from locālis, local; see local.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin localitas.

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Examples

  • After all, Howe noted, "Dr. Holmes himself maintained that 'identification with a locality is a surer passport to immortality than cosmopolitanism is.'"

    Birthplace of a Magazine 2005

  • After all, Howe noted, "Dr. Holmes himself maintained that 'identification with a locality is a surer passport to immortality than cosmopolitanism is.'"

    Birthplace of a Magazine 2005

  • He could tell to a dot the average wage or salary earned by the householders of any locality, and he made it a point of thoroughness to know every locality from the waterfront slums to the aristocratic Lake

    THE PRODIGAL FATHER 2010

  • The locality is not far from the site of the present Sale aerodrome.

    Archive 2009-02-01 2009

  • Relativistic locality is the domain of actuality, while potentialities have careers in space-time (if that word is appropriate) which modify and even violate the restrictions that space-time structure imposes upon actual events.

    Archive 2009-02-01 Gordon McCabe 2009

  • Because of the limitations of the software, this locality is using their own software to manage their lists, which is certainly understandable.

    Waldo Jaquith - Virginia Democratic list management software. 2006

  • “I wonder to what extent the turnout in each locality is an indicator of the relative effectiveness and strength of the party apparatus”.

    Waldo Jaquith - Recentered Democratic primary turnout figures. 2006

  • I wonder to what extent the turnout in each locality is an indicator of the relative effectiveness and strength of the party apparatus in each locality.

    Waldo Jaquith - Recentered Democratic primary turnout figures. 2006

  • The "Tropical Valley" has been associated with their names since they entered the locality from the Yukon side in 1924.

    The Trail of '35 1936

  • (This locality is still discernible through the arches of the Bloor Street Viaduct.)

    Old Toronto 1925

Comments

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  • By “locality,” we mean the idea that the number of things that can affect you is limited by the number of things that are close to you.
    Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe (Riverhead Books: New York, 2017), p. 175

    May 6, 2018