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

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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

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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

Around the hips is a rich cincture, and a double chain with dependant jewel encircles the neck.

From The Strife of the Roses and Days of the Tudors in the West by William Henry Hamilton Rogers

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 palace under all its vaulted roof Remurmur’d to the feet of sportive youths And cinctured maidens, while no few abroad, Hearing such revelry within, remark’d— 170 The Queen with many wooers, weds at last.

From The Odyssey of Homer by William Cowper

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

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

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

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

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