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

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

We may now, without walls, have secure boundaries—we may keep out trespassers without excluding  the fresh air—and we may circumscribe our limits without diminishing our external prospects.

From A Morning's Walk from London to Kew by Richard Phillips

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

A tall windbreak, white as a glacial crevasse, circumscribes the front door, shrouding it from view.

From New York Times ● Feb. 3, 2020

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

From "Turtles All the Way Down" by John Green

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

From Slate ● May 26, 2026

In between are Egyptian vultures, which use rocks to crack open ostrich eggs—genuine tool use—but when presented with rocks and chicken eggs simply cannot figure out what to do, suggesting a rather circumscribed “intelligence.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026

As per the country's own observations, the fund had limited ability to do something about the loan, and was "circumscribed by procedural and technical formalities".

From BBC ● May 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

His conjecture that the orbits of the planets are circumscribed by the five platonic solids were no more supported by Tycho’s data than by Copernicus’.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

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

The Constitution structures our fundamental political institutions to provide the energy and flexibility to secure rights while circumscribing the exercise of political power to prevent government from violating rights.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 16, 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