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To rail in; to inclose or surround, as with rails. Hooker.

To place in a detached situation, or in a state having no communication with surrounding objects; to isolate; to separate.

Between globules; -- applied esp. to certain small spaces, surrounded by minute globules, in dentine.

To surround with a trench or with intrenchments, as in fortification; to fortify with a ditch and parapet; as, the army intrenched their camp, or intrenched itself. "In the suburbs close intrenched." Shak.

To surround, accompany, or attend. Awe such as must always invest the spectacle of the guilt. Hawthorne.

The act of surrounding, blocking up, or besieging by an armed force, or the state of being so surrounded. The capitulation was signed by the commander of the fort within six days after its investments. Marshall.

A sheath which surrounds the base of the lasso cells in the Siphonophora.

To envelop completely; to surround; to cover; to hide; to involve in darkness or obscurity. And leave a singèd bottom all involved With stench and smoke. Milton.

To surround or encompass as with a wreath. [Written also enwreathe.] Resplendent locks, inwreathed with beams. Milton.

A tract of land surrounded by water, and smaller than a continent. Cf. Continent.

To cause to become an island, or like an island; to surround or encompass; to island. [Poetic] Isled in sudden seas of light. Tennyson.

In ordnance, a strengthening band surrounding and reënforcing the tube in which the charge is fired.

f an antique lamp. See Terebratula. -- Safety lamp, a miner's lamp in which the flame is surrounded by fine wire gauze, preventing the kindling of dangerous explosive gases; -- called also, from Sir Humphry Davy the inventor, Davy lamp. -- To smell of the lamp, to bear marks of great study and labor, as a literary co…

A kind of cage inserted in a stuffing box and surrounding a piston rod, to separate the packing into two parts and form a chamber between for the reception of steam, etc. ; -- called also lantern brass.

that part of surrounding space toward which the left side of one's body is turned; as, the house is on the left when you face North. Put that rose a little more to the left. Ld. Lytton.

boiler downward, in the form of a narrow space between vertical plates, sometimes nearly surrounding the furnace and ash pit, and serving to support the boiler; -- called also water leg.

An inscription, motto, or title, esp. one surrounding the field in a medal or coin, or placed upon an heraldic shield or beneath an engraving or illustration. Golden legend. See under Golden.

To rise, or tend to rise, as if lighter than the surrounding medium; to become buoyant; -- opposed to gravitate. Sir. J. Herschel.

Bordered, as when one color is surrounded by an edging of another.

One of the two fleshy folds which surround the orifice of the mouth in man and many other animals. In man the lips are organs of speech essential to certain articulations. Hence, by a figure they denote the mouth, or all the organs of speech, and sometimes speech itself. Thine own lips testify against thee. Jeb xv. 6.…