CIRCUMSCRIPTION • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Circumscription

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noun

Circumscription n.

An inscription written around anything. (R.)

The exterior line which determines the form or magnitude of a body; outline; periphery.

The act of limiting, or the state of being limited, by conditions or restraints; bound; confinement; limit. "The circumscriptions of terrestrial nature." "I would not my unhoused, free condition Put into circumscription and confine."

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Etymology of 'Circumscription'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Circumscription" Quotes from Famous Books

... short, I have long had on hand a work which I would fain leave behind me in such a state, at least, that it might be committed to the press by—others. Were I assured that this is the utmost I can reasonably expect, that assurance would be a useful circumscription of my attempts, and a guide in both the positive and negative determination ...

— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... limit but the extent of her power, and advances with aggravated impatience like a devouring fire; the only worthy or adequate opposition is—that of virtue submitting to no circumscription of her endeavours save that of her rights, and aspiring from the impulse of her own ethereal zeal. The Christian exhortation for the individual is here the precept for nations—'Be ye therefore perfect; even as your Father, which is in ...

— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... prevails, but a monarchy without despotism, such as it was in the heroic times of the Greeks: everything yields a willing obedience to the dignity of the heroic sceptre. Comedy, on the other hand, is the democracy of poetry, and is more inclined even to the confusion of anarchy than to any circumscription of the general liberty of its mental powers and purposes, and even of its separate ...

— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

Words linked to "Circumscription" : circumscribe, confinement