girdle

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɡɝdl̩/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɡɜːdl̩/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)dəl

From Middle English girdel, gerdel, gurdel, from Old English gyrdel, from Proto-West Germanic *gurdil, from Proto-Germanic *gurdilaz (“girdle, belt”), equivalent to gird +‎ -le.

girdle (plural girdles)

1. That which girds, encircles, or encloses; a circumference.

   the girdle of the world ― the equator

   • 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, prologue]:

     Suppose within the girdle of these walls
     Are now confin'd two mighty monarchies

   • 1782, William Cowper, Expostulation:

     from the world's girdle to the frozen pole

   • 1799, Thomas Campbell, Pleasures of Hope:

     In yonder pensile orb, and every sphere
     that gems the starry girdle of the year

2. A belt or sash at the waist, often used to support stockings or hosiery.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Revelation 15:6:

     And the seven angels came out of the temple, having the seven plagues, clothed in pure and white linen, and having their breasts girded with golden girdles

   • Aeschylus, The Persians 155:^[1]

     O Queen, most exalted of Persia's deep-girdled women, venerable mother of Xerxes, wife of Darius, all hail!

   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 109:

     She therefore assumed the novice's garb, so universally worn by young Italians—a robe of black silk, only fastened round the waist by a girdle.

   • 1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 1:

     Tradition credits John the Baptist with wearing a girdle fashioned of wormwood, while he was in the wilderness.

3. A garment used to hold the abdomen, hips, buttocks, and/or thighs in a particular shape.
4. The line of greatest circumference of a brilliant-cut diamond, at which it is grasped by the setting.^[2]
5. (mining) A thin bed or stratum of stone.^[3]
6. The clitellum of an earthworm.
7. The removal or inversion of a ring of bark in order to kill or stunt a tree.

girdle (third-person singular simple present girdles, present participle girdling, simple past and past participle girdled)

1. (transitive) To gird, encircle, or constrain by such means.
   • 1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning, page 36:

     The Equator, as everyone knows, is an imaginary line or circle girdling the Earth half-way between the North and South poles.

2. (transitive) To kill or stunt a tree by removing or inverting a ring of bark.
   • 1911, Anna Botsford Comstock, Handbook of Nature Study, 24th edition, published 1939, page 108:

     The ordinary large reddish "hen hawks," which circle high above meadows, are doing great good to the farmer by feeding upon the mice and other creatures which steal his grain and girdle his trees.

girdle (plural girdles)

1. (Scotland, Northern English) Alternative form of griddle.

• Dilger, Gilder, gilder, girled, glider, gridle, regild, ridgel