Word.ws English Dictionary

circumscribing

circumscribing is the present participle and gerund of circumscribe.

Meaning of circumscribe

Verb

circumscribe (third-person singular simple present circumscribes, present participle circumscribing, simple past and past participle circumscribed)

  1. To draw a line around; to encircle.
  2. 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."1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “Asking for an Invitation”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 29
  3. To draw the smallest circle or higher-dimensional sphere that has (a polyhedron, polygon, etc.) in its interior.

Questions about circumscribing

What is circumscribing the present participle and gerund of?
Circumscribing is the present participle and gerund of circumscribe.

Words near circumscribing in the dictionary

  1. circumscriber
  2. circumscribers
  3. circumscribes
  4. circumscribest
  5. circumscribeth
  6. circumscribing
  7. circumscript
  8. circumscriptable
  9. circumscriptible
  10. circumscription
  11. circumscriptional

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: circumscribing (page history and authors); circumscribe (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.

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