# global

/ˈɡɫoʊbəɫ/ (US) · /ɡlˈəʊbəl/ (UK)

Source: https://englishreference.com/word/global
Updated: 2026-06-19

## Senses

### 1. worldwide

adjective · CEFR B1

relating to the whole world.

For teachers: concerning or encompassing the entire world; international in scope.

- Climate change is a global problem that requires every country to work together.
- The sudden shift in trade policy had an immediate global impact, disrupting supply chains from East Asia to Northern Europe.

### 2. total or complete

adjective · CEFR B2 · Academic

considering all parts of something together; total.

For teachers: pertaining to the whole of a system, collection, or set of circumstances rather than specific parts.

- The manager took a global view of the project to see how the different teams fit together.
- The report provides a global assessment of the company's performance, accounting for both financial metrics and internal cultural shifts.

### 3. computing scope

adjective · CEFR C1 · Technical

in computer programming, something that can be used anywhere in the code.

For teachers: accessible from any portion of a program; having a scope that encompasses the entire execution context.

- You should avoid using too many global variables because they can make the code hard to fix.
- The developer refactored the code to encapsulate state, replacing several global variables with local parameters to improve thread safety.

Usage: Usually placed before the noun, such as 'global variable' or 'global constant'.

### 4. a global variable

noun · CEFR C1 · Technical

a piece of information in a computer program that can be seen and changed from anywhere.

For teachers: a variable or identifier with global scope within a software application.

- The program crashed because two different functions tried to change the same global at the same time.
- While globals can simplify data access across disparate modules, they often introduce hidden dependencies that complicate the debugging process.

## Examples

- Climate change is a serious global problem.
- The company launched a global marketing campaign to reach customers in over fifty different countries simultaneously.
- While local variables are restricted to their specific functions, a global variable can be modified by any part of the program, which occasionally leads to difficult debugging scenarios.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.