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Nearby vs Local - What's the difference?

nearby | local |

As adjectives the difference between nearby and local

is that nearby is adjacent, near, very close while local is from or in a nearby location.

As an adverb nearby

is next to, close to.

As a noun local is

a person who lives nearby.

nearby

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • adjacent, near, very close
  • He stopped at a nearby store for some groceries.

    Adverb

    (en adverb)
  • next to, close to
  • I'm glad my friends live nearby where I can visit them.

    Usage notes

    Some British writers make the distinction between the adverbial near by'', which is written as two words; and the adjectival ''nearby , which is written as one. In American English, the one-word spelling is standard for both forms.

    Anagrams

    *

    local

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • From or in a nearby location.
  • * , chapter=22
  • , title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=Not unnaturally, “Auntie” took this communication in bad part.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2012-12-01, volume=405, issue=8813, page=3 (Technology Quarterly), magazine=(The Economist), title= An internet of airborne things
  • , passage=A farmer could place an order for a new tractor part by text message and pay for it by mobile money-transfer. A supplier many miles away would then take the part to the local matternet station for airborne dispatch via drone.}}
  • (computing, of a variable or identifier) Having limited scope (either lexical or dynamic); only being accessible within a certain portion of a program.
  • (mathematics, not comparable, of a condition or state) Applying to each point in a space rather than the space as a whole.
  • (medicine) Of or pertaining to a restricted part of an organism.
  • Descended from an indigenous population.
  • Synonyms

    * (medicine) topical

    Antonyms

    * global

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A person who lives nearby.
  • It's easy to tell the locals from the tourists.
  • A branch of a nationwide organization such as a trade union.
  • I'm in the TWU, too. Local 6.
  • (rail transport) A train that stops at all, or almost all, stations between its origin and destination, including very small ones.
  • The expresses skipped my station, so I had to take a local .
  • (British) One's nearest or regularly frequented public house or bar.
  • I got barred from my local , so I've started going all the way into town for a drink.
  • (programming) A locally scoped identifier.
  • Functional programming languages usually don't allow changing the immediate value of locals once they've been initialized, unless they're explicitly marked as being mutable.
  • (US, slang, journalism) An item of news relating to the place where the newspaper is published.
  • Synonyms

    * (rail transport) stopper

    Antonyms

    * (rail transport) fast, express

    Derived terms

    * localism * locally