räumlich

Räumlich is a German adjective meaning spatial or relating to space. It describes properties, relations, or phenomena that concern the three-dimensional extent and organization of objects or environments. In everyday language it answers questions of where something is located or how it is arranged in space. In technical contexts it is widely used across geography, architecture, physics and cognitive science to specify spatial characteristics such as distance, orientation, distribution, and layout.

Etymology and usage reflect its composition from Raum, meaning space, and the suffix -lich, which forms adjectives indicating characteristic or pertaining to. The term appears in a range of noun phrases, for example räumliche Ausdehnung (spatial extent), räumliche Struktur (spatial structure), räumliche Orientierung (spatial orientation) and räumliche Trennung (spatial separation). In linguistics and cognitive science it occurs in expressions like räumliche Repräsentationen or räumliche Kognition, referring to how space is represented or processed mentally.

Räumlich is often contrasted with örtlich, which emphasizes a local or place-based dimension, whereas räumlich denotes space as a dimension in general, including abstract or global space. In English, the corresponding term is spatial, and räumlich can be translated as spatial or spatially depending on the context. The usage spans descriptive, analytical and methodological language in science and everyday speech.