Word.ws English Dictionary

L1

L1 noun: a mother tongue; someone's native language; own language. Also the abbreviation of Lagrange point 1.

l1: a mother tongue; someone's native language; own language
Image: Anynobody, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

L1 (plural L1s)

  1. A mother tongue; someone's native language; own language.
    • This advantage was pertinent in the Hong Kong context where English is largely an L2 language, although would not be expected to be as large in an L1 context.2017, Di Zou, James Lambert, “Feedback methods for student voice in the digital age”, in British Journal of Educational Technology, volume 48, number 5, page 1085

Noun (2)

L1 (uncountable)

  1. The first-level cache of a processor, closer to the processor than the second-level cache.
    • Writing of the L1 is performed one cache line at a time and can be 64 bytes or 32 bytes.2009, Sandeep Koranne, Practical Computing on the Cell Broadband Engine, →ISBN, page 22
  2. The physical layer in the seven-layer OSI network model.

Also used as

L1 is also the abbreviation of Lagrange point 1.

Forms of L1

pluralL1s

Origin of L1

From Language 1 (“first language”).

From Level 1.

Questions about L1

What does L1 mean?
L1 means a mother tongue; someone's native language; own language.
What part of speech is L1?
L1 is a noun.
What is the plural of L1?
The plural of L1 is L1s.

Words near L1 in the dictionary

  1. L/NP
  2. L/P
  3. L/S
  4. L0L
  5. l0l!
  6. L1
  7. L10n
  8. l12y
  9. L1s
  10. L2
  11. l2p

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: L1 (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “L1.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/l1. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.