1. discover the exact place or position of: "engineers were working to locate the fault"Similarfinddiscoverpinpointdetecttrack downrun to earthunearthhit oncome acrossrevealbring to lightsniff outsmoke outsearch outferret outturn upuncovercome up withlay one's hands onpin downlight onstumble across/onchance oninformal:put one's finger on
▪ place within a particular context: "they locate their policies in terms of wealth creation"
▪ establish oneself or one's business in a specified place:"his marketing strategy has been to locate in small towns"
Word Originearly 16th century: from Latin locat- ‘placed’, from the verb locare, from locus ‘place’. The original sense was as a legal term meaning ‘let out on hire’, later (late 16th century) ‘assign to a particular place’, then (particularly in North American usage) ‘establish in a place’. The sense ‘discover the exact position of’ dates from the late 19th century.