Locality

How to spell locality

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce locality

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does locality mean?

1. nounA particular place, district, or neighbourhood, especially considered as a defined area.
2. nounThe position or site of something in space, where it is situated.

Locality in a sentence

• The new bypass improved travel times across the whole locality.

• The geologist recorded the exact locality of each rock sample.

• Property prices in this locality have risen sharply over the past year.

• Engineers debated the best locality for the new pumping station.

Where does locality come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin noun locus, which simply meant 'a place' or 'a spot', the same root that gives us 'location', 'local', and 'locate'. From locus came the medieval Latin adjective localis, meaning 'belonging to a particular place', and the abstract noun localitas, which described the quality of being located somewhere or a place itself. English picked up 'locality' in the early 1600s, partly through French influence, first in the sense of position in space and later in the everyday sense of a district or neighbourhood. The spelling keeps the tidy stack of suffixes, local plus -ity, which is the easiest way to remember it: there is no doubled letter and no hidden vowel beyond the familiar -al-it-y ending. Because the same locus root underlies so many common words, the core of 'locality' is rarely a stumbling block for confident writers.

How the word is built

• loc- (from Latin locus: place)
• -al (adjective suffix)
• -ity (noun suffix forming a quality or instance)