encompassment

English

Etymology

encompass +‎ -ment

Noun

encompassment (countable and uncountable, plural encompassments)

1. The act of surrounding, or the state of being surrounded.
   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:

     By this encompassment and drift of question.

   • 1987, William H. Bowers, The Interphalangeal Joints, page 15:

     Interphalangeal extension is lost and no effective phalangeal grasp (encompassment) is possible.

   • 1995, Adrian E. Flatt, The Care of the Arthritic Hand, page 23:

     When an object is grasped, 77% of the total encompassment is provided by metacarpophalangeal joint flexion; the remaining 23% is supplied by flexion of the interphalangeal joints.

   • 2004, James Leach, Creative Land:

     However, the image of alimentary encompassment, everted when the child comes to eat pig himself or herself, is also one that could be of nurturance — of encompassment in a reproductive sense.

2. Complete inclusion, with no outliers.
   • 1971, United States. Federal Communications Commission, Federal Communications Commission Reports, page 315:

     The new encompassment standard to be applied to cases involving commonly owned stations in different broadcast services is less restrictive than the standard used for such stations under the interim policy. For example, under the interim policy if the 1-mv./m. contour of an FM station licensed to serve one community overlapped the grade B contour of a TV station proposed to be licensed to serve another community, the stations were considered to be in the same market. But under the new rules, in such a case the 1-mv./m. contour of the FM station must not only overlap the grade A contour of the TV station (as contrasted with the B contour) but must encompass the entire community of license of the TV station. In other words, the stations must be closer together in order to fall under the proscription against common ownership.

   • 2014, Daniel B. Klein, A Demand for Encompassment:

     In each trial, one person in the room was designated not to sing unless every one of the others in the room had made a payment sufficient so as to have that person sing. Our evidence of a demand for encompassment is threefold: Subjects chose to sacrifice money to achieve encompassment 47.4 percent of the time, with 59.6 percent of the subjects doing so in at least one trial. An exit questionnaire showed that subjects' chief reason for making such a sacrifice was a belief that the singing would be more enjoyable if it encompassed the whole group. Furthermore, the subjects reported significantly higher enjoyment when they had experienced encompassment.

   • 2017, Yujin Nagasawa, Maximal God: A New Defence of Perfect Being Theism:

     However, if encompassment has nothing to do with greatness, it is puzzling that Bulbus uses the phrase 'that universal nature which embraces all things' rather than simply 'that universal nature'.

3. (anthropology, sociology) A hierarchical structure such that when two elements of a whole are recognized as opposites, one of them is considered hierarchically superior, while the other is subordinated to the whole.
   • 2001, Edward LiPuma, Encompassing Others: The Magic of Modernity in Melanesia:

     It sometimes seems as though the anthropological nostalgia for Culture and the academic imperative to defend our space by defending our concept blinds us to the reality that the processes of encompassment neither leave others alone nor make them Western. Rather, encompassment creates a new terrain and terms for the production of sameness and difference, value and meaning.

   • 2007, Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad, Sari Wastell, Thinking Through Things:

     This appears then as a moment of encompassment. The work of the technologist is encompassed by the artist, or the contribution of the facilitator is claimed as part of the creative process (genius, fortune) of the artist themselves.

   • 2010, Robert Parkin, Anne de Sales, Out of the Study and Into the Field:

     On the level involving encompassment, moreover, women are simply invisible, thanks precisely to their encompassment.

   • 2020, Robert L. Brawley, Luke: A Social Identity Commentary:

     Baumann (2004, 25–27) identifies yet another way of othering as “encompassment,” which means that a larger group constitutes a hierarchy of dominance over subgroups that are included under the condition that they acquiesce to the larger group.