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To circumscribe or go round so as to surround closely; to encircle; to inclose; to environ; as, a ring encompasses the finger; an army encompasses a city; a voyage encompassing the world. Shak. A question may be encompassed with difficulty. C. J. Smith. The love of all thy sons encompass thee. Tennyson.…

To inscribe; to enroll; to record; as, to enter a name, or a date, in a book, or a book in a catalogue; to enter the particulars of a sale in an account, a manifest of a ship or of merchandise at the customhouse.

To attribute; to ascribe. [Obs.] The ancient proverb . . . entitles this work . . . peculiarly to God himself. Milton.

lar motion, on the principle that a pin fastened in the periphery of a gear wheel will describe a straight line when the wheel rolls around inside a fixed internal gear of twice its diameter.

A brief writing formed as if to be inscribed on a monument, as that concerning Alexander: "Sufficit huic tumulus, cui non sufficeret orbis."

To describe by an epithet. [R.] Never was a town better epitheted. Sir H. Wotton.

Capable of being ascribed to different motives, or of signifying opposite feelings, purposes, or characters; deserving to be suspected; as, his actions are equivocal. "Equivocal repentances." Milton.

In modern heraldry, a similar ribbon on which the motto is inscribed.

Like a sieve; cribriform.

The forms required by good breeding, or prescribed by authority, to be observed in social or official life; observance of the proprieties of rank and occasion; conventional decorum; ceremonial code of polite society. The pompous etiquette to the court of Louis the Fourteenth. Prescott.

A figure in which a harts or indelicate word or expression is softened; a way of describing an offensive thing by an inoffensive expression; a mild name for something disagreeable.

A curve from which another curve, called the involute or evolvent, is described by the end of a thread gradually wound upon the former, or unwound from it. See Involute. It is the locus of the centers of all the circles which are osculatory to the given curve or evolvent.

A prescribed movement of a body of troops, or a vessel or fleet; any movement designed to effect a new arrangement or disposition; a maneuver. Those evolutions are best which can be executed with the greatest celerity, compatible with regularity. Campbell.

A process prescribed or assigned for testing qualification; as, the examination of a student, or of a candidate for admission to the bar or the ministry. He neglected the studies, . . . stood low at the examinations. Macaulay. Examination in chief, or Direct examination (Law), that examination which is made of a witnes…

A wandering from a subject; digression. I am not in a scribbling mood, and shall therefore make no excursions. Cowper.

To copy; to transcribe; to make an attested copy or transcript of, under seal, as of a record. Holland.

skill, health, mental, improvement, moral discipline, etc.; that which is assigned or prescribed for such ebbs; hence, a disquisition; a lesson; a task; as, military or naval exercises; musical exercises; an exercise in composition. The clumsy exercises of the European tourney. Prescott. He seems to have taken a degree…

Not prescribed by official duty.

A portion of a book or document, separately transcribed; a citation; a quotation.

A smooth circumscribed surface; as, the articular facet of a bone.