environment
(ɛnˈvaɪrənmənt)
[f. environ v. + -ment. Cf. OF. environnement.]
1. The action of environing; the state of being environed. (With quot. cf. environ v. 4.)
| 1603 Holland Plutarch's Mor. 1009, I wot not what circumplexions and environments [orig. περιελεύσεις]. |
2. concr. a. That which environs; the objects or the region surrounding anything.
| 1830 Carlyle in For. Rev. & Cont. Miscell. v. 34 Baireuth, with its kind picturesque environment. 1831 Carlyle Sart. Res. ii. i. (1871) 56 The whole habitation and environment looked ever trim and gay. 1867 Froude Short Stud. (1883) IV. §2. i. 166 The flame..burnt hot in my own immediate environment. 1872 Blackie Lays Highl. Introd. 37 The environment of this loch put me in mind of Grasmere. 1956 P. S. Sears in W. L. Thomas Man's Role in changing Face of Earth ii. 473/1 The situation is clouded by a widespread confidence that this impact of man upon environment can continue indefinitely. 1967 K. Mellanby Pesticides & Pollution ii. 31 Perhaps the most obvious way in which man has contaminated his environment is by polluting the air with smoke. 1968 Biol. Conservation I. 70/1 EDF is attempting to establish..a body of common law under which the general public can assert its constitutional right to a viable, minimally-degraded, environment. |
| fig. 1862 Shirley Nugæ Crit. 278 What is poetic in the story is disengaged from its casual environment. 1870 M. Conway Earthw. Pilgr. xxv. 300 Every belief has an environment of related beliefs. |
b. esp. The conditions under which any person or thing lives or is developed; the sum-total of influences which modify and determine the development of life or character.
| 1827 Carlyle Misc., Goethe (1869) 192 In such an element with such an environment of circumstances. 1855 H. Spencer Princ. Psychol. (1872) I. iii. iii. 301 The division of the environment into two halves, soil and air. 1874 Sidgwick Meth. Ethics. v. 167 The organism is continually adapted to its environment. 1881 Romanes in Fortn. Rev. Dec. 740 Environment—or the sum total of the external conditions of life. |
c. spec. in Phonetics. (See also quot. 1951.)
| 1951 Z. S. Harris Methods Struct. Ling. ii. 15 The environment or position of an element consists of the neighbourhood, within an utterance, of elements which have been set up on the basis of the same fundamental procedures which were used in setting up the element in question. 1960 Medium ævum XXIX. 27 There was evidently a phonemic distinction between forms which ultimately had the assibilated consonant and those which did not, even in the environment of front vowels. 1963 Amer. Speech XXXVIII. 50 Consonant and pause probably made up just about this percentage of environments for all finals. 1966 Ibid. XLI. 258 In all other phonetic environments. |
d. Art. A large structure designed to be experienced and enjoyed as a work of art with all (or most) of one's senses while surrounded by it, rather than from outside.
| 1962 Listener 5 Apr. 603/3 Last summer, at the Martha Jackson gallery in New York, there was an exhibition of ‘environments, situations, places’. 1970 New Yorker 3 Oct. 93/1 About the only idea that everyone present did agree on was Whitman's suggestion that the Pepsi pavilion be an ‘environment’ in which visitors could create their own experience. 1977 Times 19 Aug. 12/5 In the jargon of modern art, an environment is a work of environmental art: a form of art that encompasses the spectator instead of confronting him with a fixed image or object. 1979 United States 1980/81 (Penguin Travel Guides) 427 Along Haight Street the trees are decorated with Japanese parasols to create ‘environments’. |
3. attrib., as environment area, environment control, environment minister.
| 1963 Daily Tel. 28 Nov. 16/2 The future pattern of cities should be conceived as a patchwork of ‘environment areas’ of residence, commerce or industry from which traffic other than that concerned with the area would be excluded. 1968 Listener 26 Sept. 393/2 A house to Bucky is an environment control. 1970 Times 27 Oct. 2/7 (heading) Mr. Walker defines role of environment minister. |
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Add: [2.] e. Computing. The overall physical, systematic, or logical structure within which (a part of) a computer or program can operate; the particular combination of operating system, software tools, interface, etc., through which a user operates or programs a system.
| 1961 Communications Assoc. Computing Machinery IV. 23 (heading) CL-1, an environment for a compiler. Ibid. 27/2 We have used the term ‘programming system’ to refer to a compiler operating within such an appropriate environment. 1964 Proc. Nat. Conf. Assoc. Computing Machinery XIX. e2.3. 11/1 Great strides have been made in the last few years toward furnishing sophisticated tools to the users, programmers and operators of computers. However, the integration of these tools into a complete, well organized environment is still a major task. 1978 Computing Surveys X. 70/1 Several programming methods in a Lisp environment can be summarized as involving the use of superimposed languages. 1981 Computer Apr. 35/1 This situation would improve if tools were configured to be continuously supportive to the user in actual day-to-day work. Such a configuration is referred to as a software environment. 1986 Micro Decision Oct. 34/2 Windows and GEM are bundled with the machine, giving the user a choice of environments. |
[3.] attrib. environment-friendly a. = environmentally friendly adj. s.v. *environmentally adv. 2.
| 1982 *Environment-friendly [see *-friendly]. 1985 Daily Tel. 1 May 8/8 They also decided to..adopt limited tax incentives encouraging motorists to buy ‘environment-friendly’ cars with pollution-reducing equipment. 1988 Grocery Update June 39/1 A closer look at an environment friendly non-aerosol anti-perspirant spray. |