a surrounding or nearby region; "the plane crashed in the vicinity of Asheville"; "it is a rugged locality"; "he always blames someone else in the immediate neighborhood"; "I will drop in on you the next time I am in this neck of the woods"
an impenetrable barrier to communication or information especially as imposed by rigid censorship and secrecy; used by Winston Churchill in 1946 to describe the demarcation between democratic and communist countries