[ad. L. ambit-us a going round, a compass; f. amb- about + itus going, f. ī-re to go.]
1. A circuit, compass or circumference.
1597. J. King, Jonah (1864), 210. The very ambit of their walls and turrets.
1655. Oughtred, in Rigaud, Corr. Sci. Men (1841), I. 83. The area of the whole circle is equal to the half ambite multiplied by the radius.
1686. Goad, Celest. Bodies, I. iii. 8. Prodigious Hailstones, whose ambit reaches five, six, seven Inches.
1713. Derham, Phys.-Theol., 43. [The earth’s] Ambit therefore is 24930 Miles.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Suppl., s.v., A particular enquiry concerning the Ambit or circumference of antient Rome.
1794. T. Taylor, Pausanias, II. 38. The ambit of each of the parts above the prothysis is thirty-two feet.
2. esp. A space surrounding a house, castle, town, etc.; the precincts, liberties, ‘verge.’
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XIX. cxxix. (1495), 938. Ambitus is a space bytwene place and hous of neighbours of two fote brode and an halfe ordeyned for a waye.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., s.v., It was frequent to inscribe the Ambit on it [a saint’s tomb], that it might be known how far its sanctity extended.
1818. Hallam, Mid. Ages (1872), II. 428. Within the verge or ambit of the king’s presence.
3. The confines, bounds, limits of a district.
1845. Stephen, Laws of Eng., II. 745. Districts lying within the parochial ambit.
1851. Sir F. Palgrave, Norm. & Eng., I. 240. Within the ambit of the ancient kingdom of Burgundy.
1876. K. Digby, Real Prop., iv. § 1. 178. Whose tenements are not within the ambit of the manor.
4. fig. Extent, compass, sphere, of actions, words, thoughts, etc.
1691. Wood, Ath. Oxon., II. col. 107. His great parts did not live within a small ambit.
1859. Sat. Rev., 19 Nov., 615/1. The ambit of words which a language possesses marks the mental horizon of the people who speak it.
1882. Times, 10 April, 7/2. They were made under a partial misconception as to the ambit of this legislation.
