circumscribe - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Verb
circumscribe (third-person singular simple present circumscribes, present participle circumscribing, simple past and past participle circumscribed)
- To draw a line around; to encircle.
- To limit narrowly; to restrict.
- ✤ “Well, I promise you to circumscribe her conquests as much as possible by extending my own,” returned Henrietta. “It will be an easy task; for Miss Churchill does not do ‘the honours of her eyes.’ I often tell her her beauty is quite wasted upon her.”1
- ✤ It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in[the] basket [of a balloon]: […]; perhaps to moralise on the oneness or fragility of the planet, or to see humanity for the small and circumscribed thing that it is; […].2
- (geometry) To draw the smallest circle or higher-dimensional sphere that has (a polyhedron, polygon, etc.) in its interior.
Etymology
From Latin circumscrībō, from circum (“around”) + scrībō (“write”). By surface analysis, circum- + scribe.
Pronunciation
Printed 2026-09-04.
(echo:: @ ⌗)