encompassing

American  

[en-kuhm-puh-sing] / ɛnˈkʌm pə sɪŋ /

adjective

1. forming a circle around something; encircling or surrounding.

   She serves the whole Anchorage real estate market, including the encompassing communities.

2. comprehensively including, addressing, or dealing with all parts or aspects of something.

   Whether as a regular treatment or a special indulgence, your fully encompassing spa experience will leave you looking and feeling fantastic!

3. fully enclosing or enveloping something.

   As she looked out reflectively over the lake, the encompassing quiet was sliced by the shrill sound of her cell phone.

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noun

1. the act or state of surrounding, enclosing, or comprehensively including something.

   The term “diaspora” allows for the encompassing of a wider range of people and experiences than “immigrants.”

Etymology

Origin of encompassing

First recorded in 1565–75; encompass ( def. ) + -ing ² ( def. ) for the adjective senses; encompass ( def. ) + -ing ¹ ( def. ) for the noun sense

Explanation

Something that's encompassing completely encloses or surrounds something else. An island, for example, sits in the midst of encompassing ocean waves. The adjective encompassing can describe things that literally encircle something, and also things that are so extensive that they seem to do so. For example, an encompassing history of World War II would include everything about the period, including the Holocaust. Encompassing comes from the verb encompass, "surround and hold within," or "include comprehensively," from the roots en-, "put in," and compass, "space or circumference."

Example Sentences

Her death marks the end of an era in Bollywood music - with her career spanning more than eight decades and encompassing more than 12,000 songs.

From BBC • Apr. 12, 2026

Bento is a co-author of a pre-print paper analyzing the recent drive in cases across the country, analyzing a database of 45 states encompassing over 50,000 schools in 3,000 counties.

From Salon • Apr. 8, 2026

Retail sales of new-energy vehicles, a category encompassing EVs and hybrid cars, fell 32% to 464,000 units in February from a year earlier, the data showed.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 12, 2026

The evacuation order was unprecedented in scale, encompassing a 6-square-mile, densely populated residential area with hundreds of thousands of people.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 5, 2026

There is a sense of power connected with such calculations which is hard to explain but which somehow involves a mental encompassing of the world.

From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos

Related Words

• enveloping