circumscribe

Perhaps anyone could guess as much, but what a layman might never know without Stanford’s book is that our busy roads severely circumscribe the territory cougars can roam, leading to isolation and inbreeding.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 20, 2024

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

If successful, its stem-cell-derived therapy would eliminate the pin-pricks and insulin injections that circumscribe the lives of the 1.5 million Americans with Type 1 diabetes.

From New York Times ● Aug. 9, 2022

And, in futuristic novels, oppressive regimes such as Margaret Atwood’s Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale severely circumscribe touch.

From The Guardian ● May 22, 2020

Taken in all its foursquare amplitude and unison, there was nothing human it did not avail to fitly arrange and fully circumscribe.

From Abraham Lincoln's Cardinal Traits; A Study in Ethics, with an Epilogue Addressed to Theologians by Beardslee, Clark S.

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

Using high-profile cases, interdisciplinary research and her own experience, Henning provides a complete account of how the criminal legal system circumscribes every part of Black children’s lives.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 10, 2021

Eight years after Diane Vidalakis’ delivery at Huntington, the injury she says she sustained under Sutton’s care circumscribes her life.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 9, 2018

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

From "Turtles All the Way Down" by John Green

In imagining her disturbed perceptions, the novel shows the old dog’s circumscribed world transfigured by long forgotten yearnings and powerfully altered understandings.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026

Yet the pardon power is circumscribed: It applies only to criminal “offenses,” excluding impeachments.

From Slate ● May 26, 2026

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

From BBC ● Nov. 29, 2025

Yet this project’s geography is circumscribed, its borders hedged.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2025

Dedd looks at her watch as a polite reminder to the woman that the visit is circumscribed.

From "In the Time of the Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez

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

Her own use of traditional forms and allusions – Ashbery, Whitman and Sexton appear, as do Borges, Homer and Lorca – are means of expanding rather than circumscribing her practice.

From The Guardian ● Jul. 2, 2020

“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