vicinity
noun
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Howdy, neighbor! Today we cozy up to vicinity, a word with neighborly origins that was welcomed into English as a French import in the 16th century from Middle French vicinité. It comes ultimately from Latin vicus, meaning "row of houses" or "village," by way of Latin vicinus, meaning "neighboring." Other descendants of vicinus in English include vicinal (a synonym of local) and vicinage, a synonym of vicinity in the sense of "a neighboring or surrounding district." Both of these are formal and rare, but vicinage is notable for giving title to the Vicinage Clause, a segment of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution that entitles an accused person to "an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law."
Examples of vicinity in a Sentence
Breanne L. Heldman, PEOPLE, 1 May 2026
Motorists should expect traffic delays in the vicinity over the period and plan to take alternate routes, officials recommended.
—City News Service, San Diego Union-Tribune, 1 May 2026
The expedition became the first spaceflight to send humans near the vicinity of the moon in more than 50 years, with the crew traveling farther from Earth than any humans before them while seeing unprecedented views of the moon.
—Saman Shafiq, USA Today, 29 Apr. 2026
At the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, a man discharged a firearm in the vicinity of hundreds of people from the worlds of politics, media, and business—among them, the president and vice president of the United States.
—David Frum, The Atlantic, 26 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for vicinity
Cite this Entry
“Vicinity.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vicinity. Accessed 5 May. 2026.
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vicinity
noun
