Provinciality

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The quality or state of being provincial involves a narrow-minded viewpoint, lack of sophistication, or a focus on local rather than broader issues
2. It signifies an outlook characterized by insularity, reflecting a preference for local traditions and the absence of broader cultural awareness
3. The condition of displaying a limited perspective includes an inclination towards local customs, a lack of global awareness, and an overall narrow-mindedness about societal matters

Etymology: "Provinciality" is a plain formation: the adjective "provincial" with the suffix "-ity," which turns an adjective into a noun for a quality or state. "Provincial" itself came into English from Old French "provincial," which in turn comes from Latin "provincialis," relating to a province, the territories Rome governed outside Italy. So the word began as a purely geographical term, meaning belonging to a region administered from the centre, before acquiring its later sense of rustic or unsophisticated. The suffix does the work here. "-ity" was borrowed through French from Latin "-itas," and it attaches to adjectives to name the quality they describe, as in "curiosity" from "curious" or "sanity" from "sane." Adding it to "provincial" produced a noun for the condition of being provincial, which in practice means the narrow outlook and manners associated with people far from the metropolis.

Synonyms: localism, narrow-mindedness

Antonyms: cosmopolitanism