environment

Definition

The surroundings of, and influences on, a particular item of interest.

Etymology

From Middle French environnement. Compare French environnement. By surface analysis, environ + -ment.

Example Sentences

• "What was seen from the top down, as a large environment with many difficult trade-offs, is instead seen from the bottom up--as 10 million microenvironments, each to be regulated in its own right. It is this inversion of perspective that distinguishes microgovernment from other kinds of regulation, and that accounts for its often-bizarre behavior."
• "It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: […]; […]; or perhaps to muse on the irrelevance of the borders that separate nation states and keep people from understanding their shared environment."
• "That program uses the Microsoft Windows environment."

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