Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In Scots law, same as circumduct, 4.

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

  • transitive verb (Scots Law) To declare elapsed, as the time allowed for introducing evidence.

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

  • verb law, Scotland, transitive To declare elapsed, as the time allowed for introducing evidence.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

See circumduct.

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Examples

Comments

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  • The Old Firm are Glaswegian tribes

    Whose loyalists hate circumscribes.

    Why not call a truce

    They can't circumduce

    And give up the insults and jibes?

    November 6, 2016

  • My self-assigned daily challenge is to write a limerick that rhymes on the Word of the Day (WotD). I have occasionally posted a limerick that included the WotD somewhere other than at the end of a line, but only rarely. A word like circumduce is especially troublesome because it is a transitive verb and it takes some engineering to place it naturally at the end of a line. I came up with a serviceable solution after reading that the word is an adornment of Scottish law. The Rangers and the Celtics (the “Old Firm”) are famously bitter football rivals in Glasgow, so it seemed apt to acknowledge a Scottish connection.

    Not only is the verb transitive but it seems to pair with only one direct object – “term”. Every usage example uses the verb in the phrase “circumduce the term.” I bethought myself of some way of writing a limerick on that phrase rather than on the verb alone. It looked unlikely but there is perverse inspiration to be got from current events. The 2016 Clinton/Trump presidential election is two days away and it is a great stimulant to the imagination.

    Elections circumduce the term

    So pauses Trump to spruce his perm.

    He thinks that election

    Can spread his infection,

    And gleefully he'll loose the germ.

    November 6, 2016