local

Forms

local m or f (masculine and feminine plural locales)^[1]

Etymology

It is a learned borrowing, borrowed from Late Latin locālis (“of a place”).^[2][1] Corominas dates it to Alonso de Palencia (1490), but the CDH has it a century earlier, in Aragonese charters of 1396 that name an ordinary and local judge.^[3][4][5] The same Latin adjective, used as a noun, is the source of the inherited lugar, which replaced the descendant of locus (“place”) because that word was confused with the adverb luego.^[3] The learned and the inherited word are thus doublets.^[1] Portuguese local, from the 15th century, is the same learned word beside inherited lugar.^[6]

The Late Latin adjective is formed with the suffix -ālis on the noun for “place”.^[1] The old form of the noun was stlocus.^[7][8] Wiktionary mentions a derivation from *stel- (“to put, place”), but de Vaan finds it morphologically unconvincing and leaves the origin open.^[7][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

In a lease of 1396 from Santa Cruz de la Serós, in Aragon, the tenants renounce nuestro juge ordinario e local “our ordinary and local judge” in favour of any church or lay judge.^[4] Pedro de Toledo's translation of Maimonides (1419–1432) uses moujmiento local, local motion, in the philosophical sense of movement from place to place.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias in 1611 gave only an example of the phrase memoria local.^[9] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1734) defined it as belonging to a particular place, and explained the notarios locales of Aragon.^[10] Terreros added a term of geometry.^[11] The noun, “an enclosed, covered place, premises”, was a recent use when the Academy first admitted it in 1884.^[12] The DLE now also has territorial and municipal senses, a local infection, and in sport the home team or player.^[2] In Mexico the noun is also a shop unit in a shopping centre.^[1]

Timeline

• 1396 – juge ordinario e local in an Aragonese lease.^[4]
• 1410 – first record in DICCA-XV's corpus.^[5]
• 1419–1432 – moujmiento local in the translation of Maimonides.^[4]
• 1490 – Alonso de Palencia's dictionary;^[13] Corominas's first record.^[3]
• 1711 – first record from the Americas, movimiento local de las aguas in Guatemala.^[13]
• 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades enters it.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy admits the noun “premises” as a recent use.^[12]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of or relating to a place (lugar).^[2][1]
2. Of or relating to a territory, district or country.^[2]
3. Municipal or provincial, as opposed to general or national: las elecciones locales.^[2]
4. (medicine) Affecting only one part of the body: anestesia local.^[2]
5. (sports) Of a team or player, competing on its own ground; home.^[2]

Noun

1. An enclosed, covered place; premises: Alquilaron un local para la tienda.^[2][1]
2. (Mexico) A shop unit in a shopping centre.^[1]

Word family

• localidad
• localismo
• localizar
• localización

Related words

• lugar
• locativo
• colocar
• dislocar
• Latin locus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. local
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 710
4. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. local
5. ^ a b Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. local
6. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2073
7. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. locus
9. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1091
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 428
11. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 2, 471
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 650
13. ^ a b Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. local