/ˈɹaʊnd/, /ɹuːnd/, /ˈɹaʊnd/
OriginFrom Middle English round, rounde, from Old Northern French roünt, rund, Old French ront, runt, reont ( > French rond), from both Late Latin retundus and the original Latin rotundus. The noun developed partly from the adjective and partly from the corresponding French noun rond. Doublet of rotund.
- physicalCircular or cylindrical; having a circular cross-section in one direction.
“We sat at a round table to make conversation easier.”
“The flowers glowed red and golden: snapdragons and sunflowers, and nasturtians^([sic]) trailing all over the turf walls and peeping in at the round windows.”
- physicalSpherical; shaped like a ball; having a circular cross-section in more than one direction.
“The ancient Egyptian demonstrated that the Earth is round, not flat.”
- physicalLoosely or approximately circular.
“a round belly”
“a round face”
“If I close my eyes I can see Marie today as I saw her then. Round, rosy face, snub nose, dark hair piled up in a chignon.”
- physicalLacking sharp angles; having gentle curves.
“Our child's bed has round corners for safety.”
- physicalPlump.
“He was tall and thin but his wife was short and round.”
- Complete, whole, not lacking.
“The baker sold us a round dozen.”
“Round was their pace at first, but slackened soon: / A stranger meeting them had surely thought, / They rode so slowly and they look'd so pale, / That each had suffer'd some exceeding wrong.”
- Convenient for rounding other numbers to; for example, ending in a zero.
“One hundred is a nice round number.”
- Pronounced with the lips drawn together; rounded.
“"Supposing somebody sees you, with all those flowers too? Supposing somebody writes him a letter? Ooooh!" (a pure round open Tamil O.)”
- Outspoken; plain and direct; unreserved; not mincing words.
“a round answer”
“a round oath”
“the round assertion”
- Finished; polished; not defective or abrupt; said of authors or their writing style.
“In his satires Horace is quick, round, and[…]pleasant.”
- obsoleteConsistent; fair; just; applied to conduct.
“Round dealing is the honour of man's nature.”
- Large in magnitude.
“I have a good banker in this city, but I would not wish to draw upon the house until the time when I shall draw for a round sum.”
“By raising turkeys the farmers were able the more surely to pay their rents. Young girls often acquired a very sufficient dowry, and towns-folk who wished to eat them had to pay round prices for them.”
- Well-written and well-characterized; complex and reminiscent of a real person.
- Vaulted.
- Returning to its starting point.
“round trip, round journey, round walk”
- A circular or spherical object or part of an object.
“in labyrinth of many a round self-rolled”
“Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes. [...] She put back a truant curl from her forehead where it had sought egress to the world, and looked him ful”
“All at once the sun was through, a round of dulled silver, racing slantwise through the clouds yet always staying in the same place.”
- A circular or repetitious route.
“hospital rounds”
“The prison guards have started their nightly rounds.”
“Edward Churchill still attended to his work in a hopeless mechanical manner like a sleep-walker who walks safely on a well-known round. But his Roman collar galled him, his cossack stifled him, his bi”
- A general outburst from a group of people at an event.
“The candidate got a round of applause after every sentence or two.”
- countableA song that is sung by groups of people with each subset of people starting at a different time.
- A serving of something; a portion of something to each person in a group.
“They brought us a round of drinks about every thirty minutes.”
“There is a snaky gleam in her hard grey eye, as of anticipated rounds of buttered toast, relays of hot chops, worryings and quellings of young children, sharp snappings at poor Berry, and all the othe”
“I said I did impersonations would you like to see
Turned around to buy her one more round”
- A single individual portion or dose of medicine.
“Daniel underwent one round of chemotherapy in February but stopped after that single treatment, citing religious beliefs.”
- UKOne slice of bread.
“For breakfast I had two rounds of toast and a mug of tea.”
- One sandwich (two full slices of bread with filling).
- A long-bristled, circular-headed paintbrush used in oil and acrylic painting.
- A firearm cartridge, bullet, or any individual ammunition projectile. Originally referring to the spherical projectile ball of a smoothbore firearm. Compare round shot and solid shot.
- One of the specified pre-determined segments of the total time of a sport event, such as a boxing or wrestling match, during which contestants compete before being signaled to stop.
“And though Fightville, an MMA documentary from the directors of the fine Iraq War doc Gunner Palace, presents it more than fairly, the sight of a makeshift ring getting constructed on a Louisiana rode”
- A stage in a competition.
“qualifying rounds of the championship”
- In some sports, e.g. golf or showjumping: one complete way around the course.
- A stage or level of a game.
“When the player uses one shell to complete a round within 50 seconds, it vanishes forever. At the end of two successful rounds, for instance, the player has only two shells to pick from during docking”
- The play after each deal.
- A rounded relief or cut at an edge, especially an outside edge, added for a finished appearance and to soften sharp edges.
- A strip of material with a circular face that covers an edge, gap, or crevice for decorative, sanitary, or security purposes.
“All furniture in the nursery had rounds on the edges and in the crevices.”
- The hindquarters of a bovine; a round of beef.
- datedA rung, as of a ladder.
“All the rounds like Jacob's ladder rise.”
“The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of wood, so that at every step there was a joint.”
- A crosspiece that joins and braces the legs of a chair.
- A series of changes or events ending where it began; a series of like events recurring in continuance; a cycle; a periodical revolution.
“the round of the seasons a round of pleasures”
“On life's long round by chance I found
A dell impearled with dew,
Where hyacinths, gushing from the ground,
Lent to the earth heaven's native hue
Of holy blue.”
- A course of action or conduct performed by a number of persons in turn, or one after another, as if seated in a circle.
“Women to cards may be compar'd: we play ¶ A round or two; when us'd, we throw away.”
“[…]the Feaſt was ſerv'd; the Bowl was crown'd;
To the King's Pleaſure went the mirthful Round: […]”
- A series of duties or tasks which must be performed in turn, and then repeated.
“The trivial round, the common task,
Would furnish all we ought to ask; […]”
- A circular dance.
“Come, knit hands, and beat the ground,
In a light fantastic round.” — Comus
- Rotation, as in office; succession.
“A Cave[…],
Where light and darkness in perpetual round
Lodge and dislodge by turns.”
- A general discharge of firearms by a body of troops in which each soldier fires once.
- An assembly; a group; a circle.
- A brewer's vessel in which the fermentation is concluded, the yeast escaping through the bunghole.
- archaicA vessel filled, as for drinking.
- A round-top.
- Northern-England, Scotland, archaic, dialectalA whisper; whispering.
- Northern-England, Scotland, archaic, dialectalDiscourse; song.
- transitiveTo shape something into a curve.
“The carpenter rounded the edges of the table.”
“Worms with many feet, which round themselves into balls, are bred chiefly under logs of timber.”
“The figures on our modern medals are raiſed and rounded to a very great perfection.”
- intransitiveTo become shaped into a curve.
“The girl's figure, he perceived, was admirably proportioned; she was evidently at the period when the angles of childhood were rounding into the promising curves of adolescence.”
- To finish; to complete; to fill out; see also round out.
“She rounded out her education with only a single mathematics class.”
“We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
- intransitive, transitiveTo approximate (a number, especially a decimal number) by the closest whole number, or some other close number, especially a whole number of hundreds, thousands, etc.; see also round down, round up.
“The exact amount was $101.65, but we rounded it to $100.”
“95.9 rounds to 96.”
- transitiveTo turn past a boundary.
“Helen watched him until he rounded the corner.”
- intransitiveTo turn and attack someone or something (used with on).
“As a group of policemen went past him, one of them rounded on him, grabbing him by the arm.”
- transitiveTo advance to home plate.
“And the runners round the bases on the double by Jones.”
- transitiveTo go round, pass, go past.
“Diouf rounded Zaluska near the byeline and crossed but Daniel Majstorovic headed away and Celtic eventually mopped up the danger.”
- To encircle; to encompass.
“The inclusive verge
Of golden metal that must round my brow.”
- To grow round or full; hence, to attain to fullness, completeness, or perfection.
“The queen your mother rounds apace.”
“So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin,
As thro’ the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined.”
- colloquialTo do ward rounds.
- intransitive, obsoleteTo go round, as a guard; to make the rounds.
“They […] nightly rounding walk.”
- intransitive, obsoleteTo go or turn round; to wheel about.
- Northern-England, Scotland, archaic, dialectal, intransitiveTo speak in a low tone; whisper; speak secretly; take counsel.
- Northern-England, Scotland, archaic, dialectal, transitiveTo address or speak to in a whisper, utter in a whisper.
“rounded in the ear”
“The Bishop of Glasgow rounding in his ear, "Ye are not a wise man," […] he rounded likewise to the bishop, and said, "Wherefore brought ye me here?"”
“Tiberius the emperor […] perceiving a fellow round a dead corse in the ear, would needs know wherefore he did so […]”
Formsround round(canonical) · more round(comparative) · most round(superlative) · rounder(comparative) · roundest(superlative) · around(alternative) · ron(alternative) · rounds(plural) · rounds(present, singular, third-person) · rounding(participle, present) · rounded(participle, past) · rounded(past) · Rounds(plural)