ambit

From Late Middle English ambyte, borrowed from Latin ambitus (“circuit; circumference, perimeter; area within a perimeter; ground around a building; cycle, orbit, revolution”) (compare Late Latin ambitus (“neighbourhood; wall of a castle, monastery, or town; cloister; parish boundary”)), from ambīre + -tus (suffix forming verbal nouns from verbs).^[1] Ambīre is the present active infinitive of ambiō (“to go around, to skirt; to encircle, surround”), from ambi- (“prefix meaning ‘both, on both sides’”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ent- (“front; face; forehead”)) + eō (“to go, move”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ey- (“to go”)). The English word is a doublet of ambitus.

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˈæmbɪt/

• Audio (Received Pronunciation):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æmbɪt
• Hyphenation: am‧bit

ambit (plural ambits)

1. (by extension)
   1. The extent of actions, thoughts, or the meaning of words, etc.
   2. The area or sphere of control and influence of something.
      • 1913, Gilbert Parker, “‘The Alpine Fellow’”, in The Judgment House […], uniform edition, Toronto, Ont.: The Copp, Clark Co., →OCLC, book IV, pages 412–413:

        He had invited Destiny to sweep him up in her reaping, by placing himself in the ambit of her scythe; but the sharp reaping-hook had passed him by.

2. (archaic) The boundary around a building, town, region, etc.
3. (archaic, rare) The circumference of something circular; also, an arc; a circuit, an orbit.
4. (obsolete) Chiefly in the plural form ambits: the open space surrounding a building, town, etc.; the grounds or precincts of a place.

   Synonym: (of a house) curtilage

• ambit claim

• ambitus

• ambit (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• BTAIM, imbat, timba

ambit

1. third-person singular present active indicative of ambiō

Learned borrowing from Latin ambītus.^[1][2] First attested in 1577.^[3]

• IPA^(key): /ˈam.bit/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ambit
• Syllabification: am‧bit

ambit m inan

1. (architecture) ambulatory

   Synonym: obejście

2. (architecture) retrochoir

   ambit katedralnego ― cathedral retrochoir

   ambit katedry ― a cathedral's retrochoir

3. (archaic) ambition

   Synonym: ambicja

4. (archaic, architecture) cloister

   Synonyms: ganek, krużganek

• ambit in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• ambit in Polish dictionaries at PWN
• “NU”, in Elektroniczny Słownik Języka Polskiego XVII i XVIII Wieku, BR-K
• Samuel Bogumił Linde (1807–1814) “ambit”, in Słownik języka polskiego
• Aleksander Zdanowicz (1861) “ambit”, in Słownik języka polskiego, Wilno 1861
• J. Karłowicz, A. Kryński, W. Niedźwiedzki, editors (1900), “ambit”, in Słownik języka polskiego (in Polish), volume 1, Warsaw, page 30
• ambit in Narodowy Fotokorpus Języka Polskiego