[f. LOCAL a. + -ISM.]
1. Attachment to a locality, esp. to the place in which one lives; limitation of ideas, sympathies, and interests growing out of such attachment; disposition to favor what is local. Also (with pl.), an instance of this state of mind.
1843. Borrow, Bible in Spain, xxvii. (1872), 160. I have never seen the spirit of localism which is so prevalent throughout Spain more strong than at Saint James.
a. 1852. Webster, Wks. (1877), II. 526. I am one of those who believe that our government is not to be destroyed by localisms, North or South.
1877. S. Bowles, in Merriam, Life (1885), II. 428. Congress is simply an aggregate seething and struggling of a great number of localisms—rarely or never losing themselves in the stream of national or patriotic feeling.
1883. Spectator, 30 June, 828. Agriculture is more weighted by what we may call the localism of labour than by any other single cause.
2. Something characteristic of a particular locality; a localizing feature; a local idiom, custom, or the like.
1823. E. Moor (title), Suffolk Words and Phrases; or, an attempt to collect the Lingual Localisms of that County.
1839. C. Clark (title), John Noakes & Mary Styles…. A Poem, exhibiting some of the most striking lingual localisms peculiar to Essex.
1850. Freeman, in Ecclesiologist, X. 284. Architectural localisms, as illustrated by the churches of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire.
1858. Almæ Matres, 38. All talk scandal, gossip, localisms.
1897. Saga-Bk. Viking Club, Jan., 306. Brushing away many of the most interesting localisms in thought and language.
