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.

---

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

---

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

Monsignor Charles Portelli, who was Pell’s master of ceremonies at the time of the offending, demonstrated to jurors how the cincture was tied around the waist.

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

On earth, “a tawny sibyl,” with “an old striped curtain—” And tatter’d tapestry o’er her shoulders hung— Her loins with patchwork cincture were begirt, That more than spoke diversity of dirt.

From Calamities and Quarrels of Authors by Isaac Disraeli

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 thunder muttered in the distance; the sharp-bladed lightnings were sheathed; a rainbow girdled the world, that had sprung into a magic beauty as if cinctured by the zone of Venus.

From The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains by Mary Noailles Murfree

Presently a fantastic form danced up from behind one of the huts, daubed with colored clays, figged out with a thousand tawdry charms, and cinctured round the middle by a girdle of half-picked bones.

From A Master of Fortune Being Further Adventures of Captain Kettle by Stanley L. Wood

Millner, as mechanically, took one of the virginally cinctured cigars, and began to undo its wrappings.

From Tales of Men and Ghosts by Edith Wharton

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

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

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---