Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The state or quality of being circumspect. See Synonyms at prudence.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Attention to all the facts and circumstances of a case, and to natural or probable consequences, with a view to ascertain the correct or safe course of conduct or to avoid undesirable results; watchfulness; wariness; caution: as, “sly circumspection,”
- n. Synonyms Vigilance, thoughtfulness, forecast, deliberation.
Wiktionary
- n. Attention to all the facts and circumstances of a case; caution; watchfulness; vigilance.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Attention to all the facts and circumstances of a case; caution; watchfulness.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the trait of being circumspect and prudent
- n. knowing how to avoid embarrassment or distress
Etymologies
- From Latin circumspectio (Wiktionary)
Examples
“It's the man's lesson in circumspection that did it.”
“That may be, but a bit of circumspection is in order, too.”
“Second baseman Fernando Vina said circumspection is inevitable.”
“He had little to lose, but he had everything to gain; and being a patient man, he resolved to gain all he could by circumspection -- in other words, by acting according to his nature, rather than by risking himself in a bold course of action for which he was wholly unsuited.”
“This, it seems to us, is a situation that, even in today's media environment, called for the kind of circumspection and restraint that WCBS and others showed in 1992.”
“And I certainly don't remember that kind of circumspection in the run up to the meltdown.”
Arianna Huffington: Tim Geithner, CNBC, and the Second Coming of Known Unknowns
“Thus the counterculture offers historians the opportunity to study the foundational gender assumptions of American society at that time closest to our own when men articulated their sexual politics absent the kind of circumspection that radical-feminist criticism now inspires in some circles. 24”
Manhood in the Age of Aquarius: Masculinity in Two Countercultural Communities, 196583
“That kind of circumspection seems to characterize a lot of reporters 'experiences in Baghdad.”
“I remember I used even to go about at that time with a kind of circumspection, as though I had a sacred chalice within me, full of a priceless liquid, which I was afraid of spilling over ....”
“His Majesty wishes to destroy that circumspection which is the reproach of the navy; that defensive system which paralyzes our fleet and doubles the enemy's.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘circumspection’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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Sense and Sensibility
Words from the book by Jane Austen.
shew, shewn, shewing, shewed, dupe, wither, rambled, extorting, cavil, rap, mildness, controuled and 133 more...
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Why We Curse: WTF?
This list collects the magnificent collection of vocabulary of the article "What the F***? Why We Curse," by Steven Pinker, in The New Republic (Oct. 2007). I think I'm more impressed with the coll...
curse, language, earthy, ancient, unthinkable, thinkable, emotional, rhyme, meter, alliteration, pleasure, metaphor and 196 more...
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the name of the rose
pleasing words I encounter whilst reading umberto eco's novel of the same name.
matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, nones, vespers, compline, usurper, simoniac, heresiarch, malefactor and 230 more...
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"The Liar"
by Stephen Fry
fetching, unguent, putdown, methinks, baccarat, scrummy, phial, tutelage, welter, slipshod, rough-book, swot and 52 more...
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P.D. James
Words I learned from reading P.D. James's mysteries.
ecclesiastical, amenable, expedient, patina, querulous, acrimony, disseminated, desultory, disingenuous, accretion, vestigial, pied-a-terre and 7 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for circumspection.

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