insular vs provincial

insular

adj
  • Having an inward-looking, standoffish, or withdrawn manner. 

  • Situated on an island. 

  • Separate or isolated from the surroundings; having little interaction with external parties; provincial. 

  • Relating to insulin. 

  • (often with a capital letter) Relating to the varieties of a language or languages spoken chiefly on islands. Insular Latin, Latin as it was spoken in Britain and Ireland. Insular Celtic, the Celtic languages of Britain, Ireland and also Brittany, as opposed to those spoken in mainland Europe other than Brittany. Insular Scandinavian, relating to the Icelandic and Faroese languages as opposed to the ones spoken in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. 

  • Relating to the insula in the brain. 

  • Of, pertaining to, being, or resembling an island or islands. 

noun
  • An islander. 

provincial

adj
  • Not cosmopolitan; backwoodsy, hick, yokelish, countrified; not polished; rude 

  • Narrow; illiberal. 

  • Constituting a province. 

  • Of or pertaining to a province. 

  • Limited in outlook; narrow. 

  • Exhibiting the ways or manners of a province; characteristic of the inhabitants of a province. 

  • Of or pertaining to an ecclesiastical province, or to the jurisdiction of an archbishop; not ecumenical. 

noun
  • A country bumpkin. 

  • A person belonging to a province; one who is provincial. 

  • A monastic superior, who, under the general of his order, has the direction of all the religious houses of the same fraternity in a given district, called a province of the order. 

How often have the words insular and provincial occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )