Global means covering the whole world. A global company, global warming, on a global scale.
It has largely replaced worldwide in business and policy language: global market, global supply chain, global reach. Globalisation is the process of economies and cultures becoming interconnected worldwide. In computing, a global variable is one visible throughout a program, and there global means whole-system rather than whole-world. Note globe, from which it comes, and that global has almost entirely lost its older meaning of spherical.
1adjectiveglobalCovering the whole world.
“Climate change is a global problem that no country can solve alone.”
synonyms: worldwide, international
2adjectiveaffectingAffecting a whole system.
“Changing this setting will make a global change to every document in the folder.”
global is a scale of coverage.
Also accepted in games: worldwide
Latin globus means a ball or sphere. Global meant spherical for about two centuries before the sense of worldwide took over completely, which happened only in the twentieth century.
Proto-Indo-European
*gel-
Latin
globus
Old French
globe
Middle French
globe
Middle English
globe
English
globe
English, today
global
From globe + -al. From globe + -al; compare French global. globe comes from late Middle English globe, from Middle French globe, from Old French globe, borrowed from Latin globus. a doublet of globus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA