Meaning & use

girdle

noun·Advanced

A close-fitting undergarment worn to support or shape the waist and hips, or, more generally, a belt encircling the body.

See it in a sentence

Her grandmother still kept an old-fashioned girdle from decades before elastic fabrics became common.

The knight wore a leather girdle at his waist to hold his sword in place.

A note on using this word

As a verb, to girdle means to encircle something completely, as in trees girdled by a ring of stripped bark.

Words with a similar meaning

beltcorset

Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.

Another way to use it

2. verb

To encircle something completely, or to cut a ring around a tree's bark to kill it.

Loggers girdled the unwanted trees so they would die and could be removed later.

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