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insular

UK/ˈɪnsjələ/US/ˈɪnsəlɚ/
adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,454 of 15,258mostly written

Insular means narrow in outlook through being cut off from others. An insular community, insular attitudes, insular and suspicious.

The Latin means of an island, and the criticism rests on the idea that islands breed narrowness, which islanders reasonably object to. In medicine it also means to do with the insula, a part of the brain.

Definitions of insular

  1. 1adjectiveinsularNarrow in outlook through being cut off from others.C2

    “The village was so insular that newcomers were still called outsiders after twenty years.”

insular is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin insularis means of an island, from insula, an island.

  1. Latin

    īnsulāris — of or belonging to an island

  2. English, today

    insular

Built from

  • īnsula · Latin — an island

Latin īnsulāris (“of or belonging to an island”), from īnsula (“an island”), of uncertain origin.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

insular in the wild

  • In the law of the United States, an insular area is a U.S.-associated jurisdiction that is not part of a U.S. state or the District of Columbia.

    Insular area

  • The term "insular" refers to the territories that were islands administered by the War Department's Bureau of Insular Affairs.

    Insular Cases

  • The "Anglo-Saxon" types of the 17th century are included in this category because both the Anglo-Saxon types and the Gaelic/Irish types derive from the insular manuscript hand.

    Gaelic type

  • The term "insular" refers to the fact that the government operated under the authority of the Bureau of Insular Affairs.

    Insular Government of the Philippine Islands

  • Puerto Rico also had an insular government at this time.

    Insular Government of the Philippine Islands

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the īnsula family

peninsulaisle

insular — used about once every 54,060 pages · #14,454 · point at the bar for the others