Definition of "engirdle" []

• To encircle or surround with or as if with a girdle. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "As all men know, somewhere in the great seas that engirdle our dominion, somewhere beyond the Ultimate Thule, there rangeth a vast monster, intolerable, not to be borne."
• "She ceased to resist so ardently, let the anguish engirdle her, do its worst."
• "Why engirdle its waist in warmth and cordage, and expose its feet to every storm and frost, to mud and snow?"