localize

Etymology

It is formed from English local + -ize.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The adjective comes from Old French local and directly from Late Latin localis (“pertaining to a place”), from Latin locus (“a place, spot”).^[3] For the senses "to make local" and "to assign to a place" the OED compares French localiser, recorded from 1798 and 1801.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

To adapt oneself to local circumstances: before 1631, in G. Harvey's marginalia, a rare and long obsolete use,^[2] which the Shorter Oxford dates to the late 16th century.^[6] The word as used today appears in 1792, in Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman, meaning to make local in character,^[2][3][4] and Dictionary.com dates it to 1785–95.^[5]

Semantic evolution

After 1792 the verb quickly gained its senses of place: to associate with a location or find it (1797), and to establish in or restrict to one place (1798).^[2] From 1820 attention could be localized, focused on one thing.^[2] Medicine took up the word next: a disease or its cause could localize in the body from 1845,^[2] and Etymonline notes that localizable (1847) was first said of diseases.^[3] In British military use from 1870 it meant to attach army units to particular places.^[2] Newspapers use it for rewriting a wider story to bring out its local interest,^[4] and Wiktionary records the commercial sense of adapting a product or service for a particular country, with its language, currency and date formats.^[1] The intransitive sense of a person settling in a place dates from 1930, and is noted as Australian by the Shorter Oxford;^[2][6] zoologists have used it of an animal keeping to a home range since 1955.^[2]

Timeline

• before 1631 – to adapt oneself to local circumstances (obsolete).^[2]
• 1792 – to make local in character.^[2][3][4]
• 1797 – to associate with a place, to locate.^[2]
• 1798 – to establish in, or restrict to, one place.^[2]
• 1820 – to focus attention on one thing.^[2]
• 1845 – in medicine, to become established at one site in the body.^[2]
• 1870 – in British military use, to attach units to particular places.^[2]
• 1930 – of a person, to settle in a place.^[2]
• 1955 – of an animal, to occupy a limited range.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To keep something within one particular place or part: Surgeons acted quickly to localize the damage.^[7][8][4][2]
2. To find or fix the position of something, or assign it to a place: The team tried to localize the source of the leak.^[7][8][4][2]
3. To make local in character, or decentralize: The council wants to localize its housing policy.^[7][8][9][2]
4. To adapt a product or service for a particular country or region, as by translating its text.^[1][2]
5. To rewrite a news story so that its local interest stands out.^[4]
6. To become concentrated in one spot, especially in the body: The pain localized in his left knee.^[8][2][6]
7. Of a person, to settle in a place; of an animal, to keep to a limited territory.^[2][6]

Word family

• localization
• localizability
• localizable
• localizer
• delocalize
• unlocalize

Related words

• local
• locus
• locality
• locate
• location
• locator

Usage notes

The spelling localise is also used, especially in British English.^[7][4][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press