circumscribe

First, the state needs to provide clear guidance to carefully circumscribe the situations in which conservatorships are, and are not, appropriate.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2023

The charter provision does not appear to circumscribe that investigative authority for the department’s highest-ranking officer, the police chief.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 13, 2023

Basholli doesn’t revisit the Kosovo War in documentary detail or dig into its geopolitical backdrop; she also doesn’t illuminate the cultural and social practices that so harshly circumscribe the lives of these widows.

From New York Times ● Nov. 4, 2021

Howlers typically start at dusk and end hours later, following desolate fire roads that circumscribe an area known to contain wolves.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 28, 2021

To circumscribe poetry by a definition will only shew the narrowness of the definer, though a definition which shall exclude Pope will not easily be made.”

From Hazlitt on English Literature An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature by Jacob Zeitlin

It’s one thing to confer maximalist, seemingly boundless authority on the executive branch and on the president that, by definition, circumscribes the judicial role.

From Slate ● Dec. 19, 2025

But Wednesday’s ruling seriously circumscribes the instances where that can actually happen, justices said.

From Washington Times ● Jun. 8, 2022

My problem is when I feel like other people’s perceptions and ideas of who I am and who they want me to be circumscribes my life and is limiting.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 11, 2021

In addition to coming on softly, Lendl circumscribes his exposure to Murray.

From New York Times ● Jun. 20, 2012

We pulled onto 1-465, the beltway that circumscribes Indianapolis.

From "Turtles All the Way Down" by John Green

As recently as the noncooperation movement in 1920-22, women played a far more circumscribed role.

From BBC ● Nov. 29, 2025

In human terms, it is an emotional and costly undertaking, circumscribed by science, chance and luck.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2025

So circumscribed is our behavior that airline employees sometimes refer to passengers as “self-loading cargo.”

From Slate ● Mar. 14, 2025

In a place long circumscribed by disaster, Bass is facing a catastrophe with financial and logistical burdens that will likely dwarf the combined fallout from the 1994 Northridge earthquake and the 1992 civil unrest.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 13, 2025

Her Maryland was a small, circumscribed world of Curt’s American friends.

From "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

That precedent set a “great level of deference” as the standard of review for deployments that have since mushroomed across the country, circumscribing debate even in courts where it is not legally binding.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 15, 2025

When, however, I search for “War on Terror, civilians killed” without even circumscribing the time range, I get about 850,000 results.

From Salon ● Mar. 1, 2024

"But that does not mean that Greece is to blame, it is just circumscribing specific areas of responsibility," he added.

From Reuters ● Jun. 15, 2023

Tightly circumscribing the zones where we can truly feel free and relaxed reminds us just how small those areas have become, and how desperately we must fight to preserve them.

From Washington Post ● May 23, 2017

“With every passing day, Watergate was circumscribing our freedom of action,” Kissinger, the one person unscathed by scandal, later said.

From "Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War" by Steve Sheinkin