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Surround vs Define - What's the difference?

surround | define | Related terms |

As verbs the difference between surround and define

is that surround is to encircle something or simultaneously extend in all directions while define is to determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly.

As nouns the difference between surround and define

is that surround is anything, such as a fence or border, that surrounds something while define is a kind of macro in source code that replaces one text string with another wherever it occurs.

surround

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • (label) To encircle something or simultaneously extend in all directions.
  • *{{quote-book, year=1944, author=(w)
  • , title= The Three Corpse Trick, chapter=5 , passage=The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common.}}
  • *{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)
  • , title=(The China Governess) , chapter=3 citation , passage=Sepia Delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, their crudely drawn Biblical scenes in faded cyclamen blending with the pinkish pine, while above them, instead of a mantelshelf, there was an archway high enough to form a balcony with slender balusters and a tapestry-hung wall behind.}}
  • * 2005 , (Plato), Sophist . Translation by Lesley Brown. .
  • and this way they get rid of those grand and stubborn opinions that surround them.
  • (label) To enclose or confine something on all sides so as to prevent escape.
  • To pass around; to travel about; to circumnavigate.
  • (Fuller)

    Synonyms

    *

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (British) Anything, such as a fence or border, that surrounds something.
  • * 1972 , 670-52042-x, chapter 15, page 283:
  • He drifted through the room, avoiding the furniture by instinct, closed the door that led to the passage, and only then flicked on his flashlight.
    It swept around the room, picking out a desk, a telephone, a wall of bookshelves, and a deep armchair, and finally settled on a handsome fireplace with a large surround of red brick.

    Derived terms

    * surround sound

    define

    English

    (Definition)

    Verb

    (defin)
  • To determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly.
  • * Sir (Isaac Newton)
  • Ringsvery distinct and well defined .
  • *{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author= Lee S. Langston
  • , title= The Adaptable Gas Turbine , passage=Turbines have been around for a long time—windmills and water wheels are early examples. The name comes from the Latin turbo'', meaning ''vortex , and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft that can perform useful work.}}
  • (obsolete) To settle, decide (an argument etc.).
  • * 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , IV.3:
  • These warlike Champions, all in armour shine, / Assembled were in field the chalenge to define .
  • To express the essential nature of something.
  • *{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author=
  • , volume=101, issue=3, page=178, magazine=(American Scientist) , title= Crinkly Curves , passage=Cantor defined a one-to-one correspondence between the points of the square and the points of the line segment. Every point in the square was associated with a single point in the segment; every point in the segment was matched with a unique point in the square.}}
  • To state the meaning of a word, phrase, sign, or symbol.
  • To describe, explain, or make definite and clear.
  • To demark sharply the outlines or limits of an area or concept.
  • *{{quote-magazine, year=2012, month=March-April, author=(Jan Sapp)
  • , volume=100, issue=2, page=164, magazine=(American Scientist) , title= Race Finished , passage=Few concepts are as emotionally charged as that of race. The word conjures up a mixture of associations—culture, ethnicity, genetics, subjugation, exclusion and persecution. But is the tragic history of efforts to define groups of people by race really a matter of the misuse of science, the abuse of a valid biological concept?}}
  • (mathematics) To establish the referent of a term or notation.
  • Derived terms

    * definable * definer

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (computing, programming) A kind of macro in source code that replaces one text string with another wherever it occurs.
  • * 1996 , James Gosling, Henry McGilton, The Java Language Environment
  • From the computer programming perspective, Java looks like C and C++ while discarding the overwhelming complexities of those languages, such as typedefs, defines , preprocessor, unions, pointers, and multiple inheritance.
  • * 1999 , Ian Joyner, Objects unencapsulated: Java, Eiffel, and C++ (page 309)
  • Anyone who has attempted to do OO programming in a conventional language using defines will find out that it is impossible to realize the benefits easily, if at all, without compiler support.

    Anagrams

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