ambient, a. and n.
(ˈæmbɪənt)
[ad. L. ambientem pr. pple. of ambīre to go about, f. amb- on both sides, round, about + ī-re to go. Cf. It. ambiente bef. 1600.]
A. adj.
† 1. Turning round, revolving. Obs. rare.
| 1614 Chapman Odyss. i. 28 The point of time wrought out by ambient years. 1620 ― Homer's Hymns Ep. Ded., Of all arts ambient in the orbe of Man. |
2. Moving round, circling about (something). rare.
| 1655–60 Stanley Hist. Philos. (1701) 64/1 The ambient æther..by the swiftness of its Motion, snatcheth up Stones from the Earth. 1692 Bentley Boyle Lect. 234 That the planets should naturally attain these circular revolutions..by impulse of ambient bodies. 1834 Disraeli Rev. Epick i. xxx. 15 Ye ambient Winds, That course about the quarters of the globe. |
3. Lying round, surrounding, encircling, encompassing, environing.
| 1596 Bell Surv. Popery i. i. xvi. 69 As well for the ambient restraint. 1658 Sir T. Browne Gard. Cyrus i. 103 The tree of knowledge was placed in the middle of the Garden, what ever was the ambient figure. c 1750 Shenstone Elegy ix. 38 Exalted to yon ambient sky. 1784 Boswell Johnson (1816) IV. 428 A captive in thy ambient arms. 1850 Blackie æschylus II. 37 With echoing groans the ambient waste bewails Thy fate. 1928 E. A. Wilcox Electric Heating vi. 128 Tank temperatures are constantly maintained at 100° F. above surrounding (or ambient) temperatures. 1958 Engineering 28 Mar. 393/3 The air pressure within the dome is maintained at the not uncomfortable figure of 2 lb per sq in above the ambient pressure. |
4. esp. Surrounding as a fluid; circumfused.
| 1605 Bacon Adv. Learn. (1640) 201 Consumption is caused by..Depredation of innate Spirit, and Depredation of ambient Aire. 1667 Milton P.L. vi. 481 Opening to the ambient light. 1711 Pope Temp. Fame 26 Whose tow'ring summit ambient clouds conceal'd. 1806 Vince Hydrost. xi. 110 If the plate be cold, and the ambient fluid be warm. 1866 Kingsley Herew. v. 104 It diffused a delicate odour through the ambient air. |
5. Rounded like a solid body. rare.
| 1801 Fuseli Lect. Art i. (1848) 360 He who decided his outline with such intelligence that it appeared ambient, and pronounced the parts that escaped the eye. |
† 6. Ambitious, aspiring. (A Latinism.) Obs. rare.
| 1647 N. Bacon Hist. Disc. iii. 12 The Clergy..soon began to be ambient and conceipt a new Idea of deportment. |
¶ As an epithet of the air, often ignorantly put for ‘limpid,’ or otherwise misused.
B. n. [The adj. used absol.]
† 1. A canvasser, suitor, or aspirant. Obs. rare.
| 1649 Bp. Hall Confirmation (1651) 16 What Fair-like confluences have we there seen of zealous ambients? |
2. An encompassing circle or sphere.
| 1624 Wotton Elem. Archit. (1672) 7 The aire..being a perpetual ambient and ingredient. 1657 Tomlinson Renou's Disp. 547 They are broad, asperated about their ambient. 1864 MacVicar in Reader IV. 679/1 Atoms or molecules have extensive atmospheres or ambients of some kind. |
3. Astrol. The ambient air or sky.
| 1686 Goad Celest. Bodies iii. iii. 472 {saturn} and {male}, by the Repetition of the Aspect, may sometimes disturb the Ambient above a year. 1868 Geo. Eliot Sp. Gipsy 193 For the ambient. Though a cause regnant, is not absolute. |
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Add: [A.] [3.] b. Audio. Designating atmospheric sound occurring naturally or at random in a particular environment at a particular time, esp. (unwanted) background noise picked up by a microphone. Usu. in ambient noise or ambient sound. Also (of recorded sound), engineered in such a way as to create or reproduce a specific acoustic quality: cf. *ambience n. 2.
| 1959 Proc. Inst. Electr. Engin. CVI. b. Suppl. No. 14. 257/1 When operating in a stereophonic manner, the ambient studio sound appears to fill the whole space between the loudspeakers with positional accent on the individual sound sources. 1961 G. A. Briggs A to Z in Audio 16 Deaf people are often worried by ambient noise which covers a wide frequency range, as it probably includes the register in which they hear best. 1964 Oceanogr. & Marine Biol. II. 431 The clicking of snapping shrimp..is a form of ambient sound when one is concentrating on the sounds of fish. 1975 D. G. Fink Electronics Engineers' Handbk. xxv. 125 Self-noise has many directional characteristics..; ambient noise generally has an omni-directional distribution. 1990 Gramophone May 2086/3 The remastering is effective overall: the Concerto has lost only a little of its original ambient bloom and certainly sounds vivid. 1992 Videomaker Feb. 65/2 (Advt.), By putting the microphone ‘where the action is’, the Nady 151 VR Wireless System delivers crisp, clear, precise professional quality audio. No more ambient noise problems. |
c. (Orig. in ambient music.). Designating or relating to a style of largely instrumental music, characterized by its predominantly electronic textures and the absence of a (persistent) beat, which is designed to create or enhance a particular atmosphere or mood, esp. of relaxation or contemplation. Also used in comb. with the names of other types of popular music (as ambient house, ambient techno, etc.) to denote various hybrid styles, mostly associated with the dance-music and rave culture of the late 1980s and 1990s.
| 1978 B. Eno Music for Airports (record sleeve note), Over the past three years I have become interested in music as ambience... To create a distinction between my own experiments in this area and the products of various purveyors of canned music, I have begun using the term Ambient Music. Ibid. Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies, Ambient Music is intended to enhance these. 1980 Melody Maker 5 Jul. 18/1 ‘The Plateau of Mirror’ continues the development of ambient music—background music for a supermarket society. 1989 Blitz Dec. 126/2 What's overwhelming is the soft-throb chorus of sandbanked synths, matched only by the sound of waves breaking against the shore... What we're talking about here is ‘ambient house’—a new phenomenon that appears to be a natural development. 1991 Vox Apr. 77/1 Fans of the Ambient Rap sound that 808 represent won't be disappointed with these semi-instrumentals. 1992 DJ 26 Nov. 24/2 The DJ Sven was playing heavy techno just two months ago, but now we hear..more ambient sounds. 1994 Rolling Stone 30 June 72/3 Selected Ambient Works 85–92..established the Cornwall..native as the pioneer of ambient techno, techno, a musical style that converts the energized electrobeats and keyboard surges of dancefloor techno into slower, more tranquil washes of sound. 1995 GQ Jan. 27/2 ‘In Dub’, the six-track bonus CD that accompanies it, is better still: fresh slices of ambient dub, spiralling improvisation and space-trippy lyrics. |
[B.] 4. ellipt. for *ambient music above.
| 1993 Wire Feb. 64/1 Electroacoustic, tape collage, post-industrial, ambient and various polystylistic unclassifiables are weird and sometimes wonderful bedfellows for nearly 75 minutes. 1994 N.Y. Times 13 Mar. ii. 32/4 Initially popular as music for ravers coming down after a night's mayhem, ambient has become a booming album-based genre. |
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▸ B. n. a. Science. A physical medium or environment; esp. a specific one treated as a variable under experimental conditions.
| 1956 Science 5 Oct. 635/1 That physicist's approach has emphasized the influence of gas ambients on the properties of the solid. 1968 Evolution 22 573/1 Evolution among Tularosa Basin rodents is toward concealing coloration... Among Amazon valley primates, natural selection operates..for conspicuous coloration. In both ambients all populations trend toward amelanism. 1984 Amer. Jrnl. Bot. 71 696/1 Microscopic leaf characteristics..were all significantly increased at the two higher CO2 ambients. 2000 Jrnl. Electrochem. Soc. 147 3892 It involves the application of an electric field across wafers exposed to oxidizing and inert annealing ambients. |
b. gen. The pervading tone or mood of a place, situation, etc.; the prevailing social, psychological, or intellectual conditions or attitudes; circumstances, atmosphere. Freq. in pl.
| 1959 F. B. Pike Freedom & Reform in Lat. Amer. Introd. 2 In these ambients, it seems that reform as envisioned by a ruling clique is the only important consideration. 1968 Speculum 43 374 The editor..describes with a wealth of detail drawn from documentary sources the social political background as well as the literary, artistic, and musical ambients in which these manuscripts were produced. 1974 Jrnl. Politics 36 465 Because of its generality, it appears to have application in multiparty ambients as well as in other single-party systems. 2000 ONASA News Agency Newswire (Nexis) 18 Apr. Vujovic especially stressed the political ambient in this smaller Yugoslavia's republic and its surroundings. |
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▸ Chiefly Biol. = ambient temperature n. at Additions.
| 1958 Science 24 Oct. 1013/2 Temperature control is maintained {pm} 2°F from ambient to 5°F. 1965 Science 25 June 1722/2 (table) Temperature range with He injection (°K)..264.4 to ambient. 1970 Ann. Missouri Bot. Garden 57 348 There is a gradient in the winter temperature from low ambients below freezing at the northern end of the sahuaro..to higher winter temperatures at the southern end. 1975 Canad. Jrnl. Physiol. & Pharmacol. 53 293 The increasing stroke volume throughout the Ta range (29–5°C) was linearly related to decreasing ambients. 1993 Austral. Jrnl. Zool. 41 577 The increased energy requirements for warm-up at low ambients may limit the frequency of warm-up and flight. 1998 Off Road & 4 Wheel Drive Feb. 4/1 (advt.) Pre-heating your engine/interior means assured engine starting however cold the winter ambient. |
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▸ A. adj. Designating or relating to goods, esp. foods, that are stored at unregulated ambient temperatures (usually room temperature), as opposed to being frozen or otherwise stored in a temperature-controlled environment.
This term is most frequently applied to foods that are heat-treated, aseptically packaged, or canned to give them a long shelf-life, and to some other products with a relatively short shelf-life, such as baked goods.
| 1983 Retail & Distribution Managem. May–June 14 (advt.) Support with..chilled or ambient warehousing. 1990 Times 10 Mar. 22/2 The Haussmann store is stronger on ambient food but is attempting to sell more chilled. 1997 Bakers' Rev. Sept. 43/2 [He] is an established manufacturer and supplier of premium bread and confectionery ingredients, ambient and frozen goods. 2001 Retail Newsagent 7 July 27/3 It's been worthwhile giving bottled water more space and keeping it in the chiller all year round as the rate of sale for chilled is twice as much as ambient. |
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▸ Marketing (orig. Brit.). Designating or relating to a form of advertising which seeks to pervade the everyday environment or activity of consumers, typically by placing advertisements in unexpected public spaces or on common functional objects.
| 1995 Marketing 7 Dec. 10/5 Ads on petrol pump handles are indicative of a general trend towards ambient media entering the mainstream. 2001 Independent on Sunday 22 Apr. i. 10/4 More commonly seen ambient ads include the strips advertising McDonald's along the edge of steps at London Underground stations, and the eye-line posters on hotel and restaurant washrooms. 2004 M. Bailey Marketing your Business i. x. 120 Ambient advertising is most effective when backed up with outdoor advertising in more traditional locations. |
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▸ ambient temperature n. the temperature of the surrounding environment, esp. as unaltered by direct human intervention.
| 1939F. E. J. Fry in F. R. Moulton Probl. Lake Biol. 132 Fish possess no hair to insulate their body from the *ambient temperature. 1965 Trans. Amer. Geophys. Union 46 (heading) 4653 New catalytic systems for ambient temperature synthesis of benzene for liquid scintillation radiocarbon dating. 1987 E. H. J. Pallett Aircraft Electr. Syst. (ed. 3) Ambient temperature range -75°C to + 50°C... Application General services wiring except where ambient temperatures are high and/or extended properties of flexibility are required. |