How to Use circumscribe in a Sentence

circumscribe

verb
  • The circle is circumscribed by a square.
  • In so many ways, these women’s worlds are circumscribed by the men in their lives—even when the men are no longer there.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 15 Nov. 2024
  • At the same time, my role had become more clearly defined and circumscribed.
    — Matthew Klam, The New Yorker, 6 Oct. 2024
  • RuPaul told me that his social life is circumscribed, in some ways, by design.
    — Ronan Farrow, The New Yorker, 1 Mar. 2024
  • On small campuses, this can mean his life is completely circumscribed.
    — Emily Yoffe, The Atlantic, 6 Sep. 2017
  • My mother-in-law had gallbladder problems that greatly circumscribed her choice of meals.
    — Hazlitt, 2 Apr. 2025
  • My current contact with her is very circumscribed by my desire to respect my husband’s wishes.
    — Amy Dickinson, The Denver Post, 28 Mar. 2017
  • The idea of how a pregnant woman should appear in public wasn’t always this highly circumscribed.
    — Anne Helen Petersen, Cosmopolitan, 19 June 2017
  • Elderly leaders were acceptable in these roles so long as their power was circumscribed.
    — Rebecca Brannon / Made By History, TIME, 3 July 2024
  • But the apartheid regime became a police state that heavily circumscribed its white citizens’ lives, too.
    — Eve Fairbanks, The Dial, 27 Jan. 2026
  • Our identities and sense of worth are not circumscribed but enlarged by serving good causes bigger than ourselves.
    — Natalie Andrews, WSJ, 27 Aug. 2018
  • Our identities and sense of worth were not circumscribed, but are enlarged by serving good causes bigger than ourselves.
    — Li Zhou, Vox, 1 Sep. 2018
  • Real-life pairings are usually circumscribed by a person’s social sphere, and the chances of meeting a total stranger are low.
    — The Economist, 12 Sep. 2019
  • Theo is born at an inopportune time for Jews, whose rights are increasingly circumscribed in the country.
    — Julia M. Klein, Los Angeles Times, 24 Feb. 2025
  • That these games would be circumscribed by politics was a given from the outset because of regional rivalries.
    — CBS News, 25 Feb. 2018
  • Ed’s high-paying job allows (or relegates) Jess to be a stay-at-home mum, her life devoted to (and circumscribed by) her children.
    — Judy Berman, Time, 10 Dec. 2025
  • These Black artists are asserting their right to public space at a time when that space is still circumscribed by race, gender and class — and can be fatal to occupy.
    — Emily Lordi, New York Times, 24 Mar. 2023
  • State media reports of major events tend to be tightly circumscribed by the Communist leadership.
    — Kwanwoo Jun, WSJ, 2 Dec. 2018
  • At the same time, at least a half-dozen states have enacted laws giving parents more power over which books appear in libraries or circumscribing students’ access to books.
    — Hannah Natanson, Anchorage Daily News, 24 May 2023
  • But recently, Ware said that attacks have been circumscribed to far fewer victims - even when there was the opportunity to kill more.
    — NPR, 25 Oct. 2025
  • This is the effect of her books, too, in which vast, inhuman forces circumscribe her characters’ most personal experiences.
    — Alice Gregory, The New Yorker, 9 Nov. 2020
  • Hizbut, already banned or circumscribed in some countries, is estimated to have tens of thousands of members in Indonesia.
    — Stephen Wright, The Seattle Times, 19 July 2017
  • The junta has pledged to stage elections within a year, even though its capacity to hold a vote—even a sham one—seems hugely circumscribed, both by war and by the March earthquake.
    — Ye Myo Hein, Foreign Affairs, 17 Apr. 2025
  • Thirty-six years later Spain is a mature parliamentary monarchy in which the Crown’s role is strictly circumscribed.
    — Ana Palacio, WSJ, 5 Oct. 2017
  • In the institute’s view, AI’s future should be circumscribed by regulation.
    — The Editors, National Review, 7 Apr. 2023
  • If he is convicted of any of the charges, whether at trial or through a plea, his role would be severely circumscribed under House rules, and he would likely be compelled to resign.
    — Michael Gold, New York Times, 10 May 2023
  • However, since Messrs Brin and Page retain control via a dual-class share structure, his freedom will be circumscribed.
    — The Economist, 4 Dec. 2019
  • The culmination of decades of research, a reservoir of hope for thousands, these oblong tablets were supposed to transform her life, a life circumscribed by illness and the specter of early death.
    — Felice J. Freyer — Boston Globe, STAT, 20 Sep. 2023
  • One of the crucial steps in destroying a democracy and reshaping a society is to capture the referees and circumscribe their power.
    — Brynn Tannehill, The New Republic, 17 Oct. 2022
  • The softer those talks look the more likely that the government will have its majority circumscribed by the hard Brexit-leaning lawmakers.
    — Simon Kennedy, Bloomberg.com, 22 June 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'circumscribe.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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