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

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

Time and experience dissipate this illusion; and by reducing them to detail, circumscribe the limits of our expectations.

From A Century of English Essays An Anthology Ranging from Caxton to R. L. Stevenson & the Writers of Our Own Time by Ernest Rhys

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

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

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2025

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

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

From Slate ● Mar. 14, 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

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