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

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

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

Moreover, to spirits inhabiting angelic organisms, things which circumscribe human vision probably constitute no obstructions.

From The Messiah in Moses and the Prophets by Lord, Eleazar

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

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

My son doesn’t like seafood, so that circumscribes that.

From New York Times ● Aug. 14, 2015

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

From "Turtles All the Way Down" by John Green

“From the start, Humphrey’s was tethered to a highly circumscribed and almost fictional view of the FTC’s role,” Chief Justice John Roberts writes for the majority.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 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

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

Unlike in classical Athens, however, the power of the city’s civil servants was entirely circumscribed by the king’s, preserving only the outward form, not the substance, of self-government.

From "Circumference" by Nicholas Nicastro

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

Briefs supporting and opposing New York have excavated historical examples of laws protecting, and laws circumscribing, the right to carry guns in public.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 29, 2021

“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