SURROUNDINGS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does surroundings mean? 

• SURROUNDINGS (noun)
  The noun SURROUNDINGS has 2 senses:

1. the environmental condition

2. the area in which something exists or lives

  Familiarity information: SURROUNDINGS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SURROUNDINGS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The environmental condition

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

milieu; surroundings

Hypernyms ("surroundings" is a kind of...):

environment (the totality of surrounding conditions)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The area in which something exists or lives

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

environment; environs; surround; surroundings

Context example:

the country--the flat agricultural surround

Hypernyms ("surroundings" is a kind of...):

geographic area; geographic region; geographical area; geographical region (a demarcated area of the Earth)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "surroundings"):

ambiance; ambience (the atmosphere of an environment)

medium (the surrounding environment)

scene; setting (the context and environment in which something is set)

element (the most favorable environment for a plant or animal)

habitat; home ground (the type of environment in which an organism or group normally lives or occurs)

melting pot (an environment in which many ideas and races are socially assimilated)

parts (the local environment)

Derivation:

surround (extend on all sides of simultaneously; encircle)

 Context examples 

As the fluid expands, it decreases in temperature, cooling its surroundings.

(Green material for refrigeration identified, University of Cambridge)

Second, the bright areas in the swirls appear to be less weathered than their surroundings.

(NASA Research Gives New Insights into How the Moon Got 'Inked', NASA)

CH+ therefore traces how energy flows in the galaxies and their surroundings.

(ALMA Finds Huge Hidden Reservoirs of Turbulent Gas in Distant Galaxies, ESO)

The affected regions become cooler than their surroundings and appear dark in comparison.

(Kepler Watches Stellar Dancers in the Pleiades Cluster, NASA)

Evaluating devices for responses to physical characteristics in their surroundings.

(Device Environmental Evaluation Method, Food and Drug Administration)

Surroundings or conditions that provide the means and opportunity to achieve physical and/or mental wellbeing.

(Healthy Environment, NCI Thesaurus)

Any limited region within a subject's image which visually stands out from its surroundings.

(Focal Image, NCI Thesaurus)

The units of measure that are used to express the temperature of the surroundings.

(Environmental Temperature Units, NCI Thesaurus)

This study shows how human DNA is vulnerable to many agents in our surroundings.

(‘Fingerprint database’ could help scientists to identify new cancer culprits, University of Cambridge)

It was strange under these altered surroundings to see the old, well-known faces and figures.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)