surround
To encircle something or simultaneously extend in all directions.
Noun
- Anything, such as a fence or border, that surrounds something.
- He drifted through the room, avoiding the furniture by instinct, closed the door that led to the passage, and only then flicked on his flashlight. It swept around the room, picking out a desk, a telephone, a wall of...
Origin
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *úp Proto-Indo-European *-er Proto-Indo-European *upér Proto-Italic *super Latin super Latin super- Latin unda Latin undō Late Latin superundōder. Middle French souronderbor. Middle English sourrounden English surround From Middle English sourrounden (“to submerge, overflow”), from Middle French souronder, suronder, from Late Latin superundō, from super + undō (“to rise in waves”), from unda (“wave”).
Forms
Derived
Verb
- To encircle something or simultaneously extend in all directions.
- The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the...
- It took a long time for the place to warm up and to counteract the cold and enable their fingers to cope with the delicate task of moulding, the men would often surround themselves with blocks of iron heated in the...
- Sepia Delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, their crudely drawn Biblical scenes in faded cyclamen blending with the pinkish pine, while above them, instead of a mantelshelf, there was an archway high enough to form a...
Synonyms: bound
- To enclose or confine something on all sides so as to prevent escape.
- The lions surrounded the deer herd so they had no way to escape.
- They surrounded each other in the classroom and started trading hits.
- To pass around; to travel about; to circumnavigate.
- to surround the world
- Unfitting it vvas, that the body of that vvorthy Patriarch [Joseph] (to vvhom all the land belonged by promiſe) ſhould ſteale into that Countrey in a clandeſtine vvay, and privately enter in at the poſtern door, rather...