regional
Americanadjective
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of or relating to a region of considerable extent; not merely local.
a regional meeting of the Boy Scouts.
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of or relating to a particular region, district, area, or part, as of a country; sectional; local.
regional differences in pronunciation.
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Medicine/Medical, Anatomy. pertaining to, affecting, or localized in a particular area or part of the body.
regional anesthesia.
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having, exhibiting, or characterized by regionalism.
He writes regional novels.
noun
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Often regionals. a regional competition or tournament.
The basketball team won the regionals.
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a regional company, branch, stock exchange, etc..
Regionals are getting stiff competition from the national firms.
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of regional
From the Latin word regiōnālis, dating back to 1645–55. See region, -al 1
Explanation
Regional is bigger than local and smaller than national. The local weather forecast covers your city and perhaps a few suburbs; the regional forecast gives you more: maybe a slew of counties, maybe the whole state, maybe even several states. People who write dictionaries like to think of regional as being a precise term, having to do with well-defined geographic and cultural areas within larger nations: like regional cuisines, regional customs and even, in places like the Great Lakes, regional weather patterns. But lots of times regional is fuzzier than that. A regional high school has students from more than one town, but just how many towns depends on other factors — the local political structure, the number of kids in the area, and the like.
Vocabulary lists containing regional
Unit 3: Compelling Evidence
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The Syrian Refugee Crisis Continues
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
If the Bruins advance, they will host a super regional against the winner of the Morgantown Regional hosted by West Virginia.
From Los Angeles Times • May 25, 2026
“You can’t control where you’re going, as far as the regional, but you could have controlled playing better baseball in those moments,” Stankiewicz said.
From Los Angeles Times • May 25, 2026
WHO's Africa regional director Mohamed Yakub Janabi said Ebola had had a silent early phase, when symptoms resemble malaria or typhoid, meaning transmission can remain undetected.
From Barron's • May 22, 2026
The cuts, some officials argue, gutted the network of regional health institutions and local nonprofit organizations in Central Africa that would have been positioned to potentially help identify and contain the Ebola outbreak early on.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 22, 2026
During the McMillian hearings, a local minister had held a regional church meeting about the case and had asked me to come speak.
From "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
