GIRDLE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Girdle

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/gˈərdəl/ Listen

noun

Girdle n. A griddle. (Scot. & Prov. Eng.)

Girdle n.

1.

That which girds, encircles, or incloses; a circumference; a belt; esp., a belt, sash, or article of dress encircling the body usually at the waist; a cestus. " Within the girdle of these walls." "Their breasts girded with golden girdles."

2.

The zodiac; also, the equator. (Poetic) "From the world's girdle to the frozen pole." "That gems the starry girdle of the year."

3.

(Jewelry) The line ofgreatest circumference of a brilliant-cut diamond, at which it is grasped by the setting.

4.

(Mining) A thin bed or stratum of stone.

5.

(Zool.) The clitellus of an earthworm.

Girdle bone (Anat.), the sphenethmoid. See under Sphenethmoid.

Girdle wheel, a spinning wheel.

Sea girdle (Zool.), a ctenophore. See Venus's girdle, under Venus.

Shoulder girdle, Pectoral girdle, and Pelvic girdle. (Anat.) See under Pectoral, and Pelvic.

To have under the girdle, to have bound to one, that is, in subjection.

verb

Girdle v. t. (past & past part. girdled; pres. part. girdling)

1.

To bind with a belt or sash; to gird.

2.

To inclose; to environ; to shut in. "Those sleeping stones, That as a waist doth girdle you about."

3.

To make a cut or gnaw a groove around (a tree, etc.) through the bark and alburnum, thus killing it. (U. S.)

See images of 'Girdle'

Etymology of 'Girdle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Girdle" Quotes from Famous Books

... guineas in four months. Concert-rooms were too small to hold her audiences, and she was obliged to use the great hall of the Public Exchange, which would hold more than four thousand people. At her last concert the Emperor and Empress loaded her with costly gifts, among them being a girdle of magnificent diamonds. ...

— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... from the noble Princes in the name of the blessed Virgin, and the two boys saw a pilgrim standing at the gate, wrapt in a long robe of serge, with a staff in his hand, surmounted by a Cross, a scrip at his girdle, and a broad shady hat, which he had taken off, as he stood, making ...

— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in the chimney, and the fleecy fog is coming over Russian Hill from the Pacific, and hiding the ships in San Francisco Bay, and the last sheets from my pen are gathered up by Rajah, wearing in his girdle ...

— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... point of view, in the descendants of free citizens who accepted from any vile enslaver—French, Spanish, German, or priest, or monk (represented with a piece of buffoonery, like a beehive on his head and a picklock key at his girdle)—the titles of counts and marquises. In Piedmont the matter is different: we must either have been the rabble or the lords; we were military, and we retain over the populace the same rank and spirit as our ancestors ...

— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... is repeated at each of the seven gates; the keeper at each strips Ishtar of some article of her attire—her earrings, her necklace, her jewelled girdle, the bracelets on her arms and the bangles at her ankles, and lastly her long flowing garment. On each occasion the same words are repeated by both. When Ishtar entered the presence of Allat, the queen looked at her and taunted her to her face: ...

— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

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