cincture
[singk-cher]
- a belt or girdle.
- something that surrounds or encompasses as a girdle does; a surrounding border: The midnight sky had a cincture of stars.
- (on a classical column) a fillet at either end of a shaft, especially one at the lower end.Compare orle(def 3b).
- the act of girding or encompassing.
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- to gird with or as if with a cincture; encircle; encompass.
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Origin of cincture
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for cincture
Historical Examples
Each of us were drawn by him, she with the cincture of Venus, and I with the crescent of Dian.
Ormond, Volume III (of 3)Charles Brockden Brown
These women had a cincture of cotton about their loins, but were otherwise nude.
Canyons of the ColoradoJ. W. Powell
He threw himself back in an arm-chair, tucking his hands into his cincture.
The CathedralJoris-Karl Huysmans
Yea, though every knight in the realm essayed to unfasten that cincture, it would not yield, except to one alone.
French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de FranceMarie de France
Then she applied the antiseptic dressing, and bound the lint tightly down with a cincture about the animal.
cincture
- something that encircles or surrounds, esp a belt, girdle, or border
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Word Origin
C16: from Latin cinctūra, from cingere to gird
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for cincture
n.
1580s, from Latin cinctura "a girdle," from cinctus, past participle of cingere "to surround, encircle" (see cinch (n.)). The verb is recorded from 1757 (implied in Cinctured).
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper