Definition of "insular" []

• Of, relating to, or constituting an island. (adjective)
• Living or located on an island. (adjective)
• Suggestive of the isolated life of an island: "He is an exceedingly insular man, so deeply private as to seem inaccessible to the scrutiny of a novelist” ( Leonard Michaels). (adjective)
• Circumscribed and detached in outlook and experience; narrow or provincial. (adjective)
• Anatomy Of or relating to isolated tissue or an island of tissue. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The fairly unprecedented pomp of Friday's White House farewell ceremony for Rahm Emanuel speaks to his power and ubiquitousness in insular Washington, as he prepares to run for Mayor of Chicago."
• "And I'm glad that he is happy in insular little SMA - it's a lovely city - but when I visited there a year or so ago, I found that so many of the local extranjeros seemed to consider themselves so cool just because they could afford to live there that I was almost embarrassed by it."
• "North Dakota politics is often called insular, but this looks like a political version of"