Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In Gregorian music. the range or compass of a melody.
  • noun In the flat seaurchins or echinoids, the peripheral or equatorial area of the test which is not transsected by the ambulacra.
  • noun A going round; a circuit; the circumference, periphery, edge, or border of a thing, as of a leaf or the valve of a shell.
  • noun 2. In architecture, an open space surrounding a building or a monument.
  • noun In antiquity, an open space about a house separating it from adjoining dwellings, and representing the ancient sacred precinct around a family hearth. In Rome the width of the ambitus was fixed by law at 2½ feet.
  • noun In ancient Rome, the act of canvassing for public office or honors. See ambition, 1.—5. In logic, the extension of a term.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The exterior edge or border of a thing, as the border of a leaf, or the outline of a bivalve shell.
  • noun (Rom. Antiq.) A canvassing for votes.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun music the range of a melody, especially those of ecclesiastical chants
  • noun botany, zoology The exterior edge or border of a thing, such as a leaf or shell.
  • noun historical A canvassing for votes.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin ambitus ("circuit, ostentation")

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Examples

  • 'algebra' about as much as, in Latin, 'ambitus' implies 'ambition,'

    The Purloined Letter 2006

  • 'algebra' about as much as, in Latin, 'ambitus' implies 'ambition,'

    The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 Edgar Allan Poe 1829

  • The French are the originators of this particular deception; but if a term is of any importance -- if words derive any value from applicability -- then 'analysis' conveys 'algebra' about as much as, in Latin, 'ambitus' implies 'ambition,' 'religio' 'religion,' or 'homines honesti' a set of honorable men. "

    The Purloined Letter 1845

  • The special feature of this C protus mode is that it supposes two transpositions, to the fourth above and the fifth below D to G and G to C, and the exploitation of a different ambitus.

    Archive 2009-06-01 Lu 2009

  • And there he goes making philological remarks which should positively delight any lovers of Latin: when he recalls without deigning to say anymore that "ambitus doesn't mean ambition, religio, religion, homines honesti, honest men," who among you would not take pleasure in remember ing . . . what those words mean to anyone familiar with Cicero and Lucretius.

    enowning enowning 2008

  • The juxtaposed melodic phrases extend over an ambitus, or compass of the whole of the fifth and two tones of its plagal, or the sixth mode.

    Archive 2008-03-01 bls 2008

  • The juxtaposed melodic phrases extend over an ambitus, or compass of the whole of the fifth and two tones of its plagal, or the sixth mode.

    A Palm Sunday Sung Passion bls 2008

  • And there he goes making philological remarks which should positively delight any lovers of Latin: when he recalls without deigning to say anymore that "ambitus doesn't mean ambition, religio, religion, homines honesti, honest men," who among you would not take pleasure in remember ing . . . what those words mean to anyone familiar with Cicero and Lucretius.

    Archive 2008-03-01 enowning 2008

  • Graecanicam saltantes Pyrrhicam, dispositis ordinationibus, decoros ambitus inerrabant, nunc in orbem flexi, nunc in obliquam seriem connexi, nunc in quadrum cuneati, nunc inde separati, &c.

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • I will acquaint him with my project, or if any worthy man will stand for any temporal or spiritual office or dignity, (for as he said of his archbishopric of Utopia, 'tis sanctus ambitus, and not amiss to be sought after,) it shall be freely given without all intercessions, bribes, letters,

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

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