cincture

American  

[singk-cher] / ˈsɪŋk tʃər /

noun

1. a belt or girdle.

2. something that surrounds or encompasses as a girdle does; a surrounding border.

   The midnight sky had a cincture of stars.

3. (on a classical column) a fillet at either end of a shaft, especially one at the lower end.

4. the act of girding or encompassing.

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verb (used with object)

cinctured, cincturing

1. to gird with or as if with a cincture; encircle; encompass.

cincture British  

/ ˈsɪŋktʃə /

noun

1. something that encircles or surrounds, esp a belt, girdle, or border

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Other Word Forms

• uncinctured
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of cincture

< Latin cinctūra, equivalent to cinct ( us ) ( cinc-, variant stem of cingere to gird, cinch ¹ + -tus past participle suffix) + -ūra -ure

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

cincture cinctured cincturing

The institution has a lot of baggage, as any organization with nearly two millennia and a few crusades under its cincture is bound to have.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 22, 2025

Prosecutors pointed out that having a cincture around the waist did not restrict movement from the waist down.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 1, 2019

Over his regular clothes, Pell would wear a full-length white robe called an alb that was tied around his waist with a rope-like cincture.

From Fox News ● Feb. 26, 2019

For the ceremony, the Pope wore the bloodstained cincture that Romero had been wearing when he was killed.

From The New Yorker ● Oct. 22, 2018

From her painted cincture hung her war-sporran,—a narrow cascade of pale blue wampum barred with scarlet and lined with winter weasel.

From The Little Red Foot by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

Eighteen hundred feet up the Blue Ridge, hard by Snicker's Gap, where Turner Ashby's grey cavalry thundered through to join Jackson in the Valley, stands a fine brick building faced with ten cinctured columns.

From Time Magazine Archive

The clinging tresses were cinctured at the waist with a sort of cord of twisted orange-colored material, and some of the younger women wore bands of the same material around their brows.

From Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 by Harry Bates

From a canvas of "High Art" sort they shone, Their owner was cinctured with classic zone, She was spare of flesh, she was big in bone, Oh, what a surprise!

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 101, October 3, 1891 by Various

Her people are arrayed in purple vesture, and wear cloaks of gold; their loins are cinctured with girdles rich with precious stones.

From The Story of Paris by Katherine Kimball

There was no word in answer, only a closer folding of the arms that cinctured her.

From The Lilac Sunbonnet by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett

Doctor Douglass drew closer, and asked: "Will you let me stay also, and enjoy with you the wonderful charm of this opalescent air, this beautiful cincturing sea?"

From At the Mercy of Tiberius by Augusta J. (Augusta Jane) Evans