ambient

From Latin ambiens (“going around”), from ambiō (“go around”).

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈæm.biː.ənt/

ambient (comparative more ambient, superlative most ambient)

1. Encompassing on all sides; surrounding; encircling; enveloping.

   A cup of tea eventually cools to the ambient temperature.

   • (Can we date this quote by Alexander Pope?)

     a glorious pile […] whose tow'ring summit ambient clouds concealed

   • (Can we date this quote by Milton?)

     This which yields or fills all space, the ambient air wide interfused.

2. (music) Evoking or creating an atmosphere: atmospheric.
3. Relating to, or suitable for, storage at room temperature.

   ambient food

   ambient warehousing

4. (mathematics) Containing objects or describing a setting that one is interested in.
   • 1996, Moshe Machover, Set Theory, Logic and Their Limitations, Cambridge University Press →ISBN, page 282

     These, then, are characterizations of the system of natural numbers within an ambient set theory. And they seem to work, in the sense that in a sufficiently strong set theory it can be shown that Peano's axioms have (up to isomorphism) a unique model (cf. Rem. 6.1.8).

   • 2008, Akihiro Kanamori, The Higher Infinite: Large Cardinals in Set Theory from Their Beginnings, Springer Science & Business Media →ISBN, page 369

     As much of the work in determinacy must proceed without AC, ZF serves as the ambient theory for this section, and uses of AC will be explicitly noted, reversing the usual procedure.

   • 2011, Henry W. Haslach Jr., Maximum Dissipation Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics and its Geometric Structure, Springer Science & Business Media →ISBN, page 163

     A point in the manifold is classically represented by a vector in the ambient space.

ambient (countable and uncountable, plural ambients)

1. Something that surrounds; encompassing material, substance or shape.
   • 1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia:

     Much after this same manner, when the Air is exceeding cold through which it passes; do we find the drops of Rain, falling from the Clouds, congealed into round Hail-stones by the freezing Ambient.

2. (astrology) The atmosphere; the surrounding air or sky; atmospheric components collectively such as air, clouds, water vapour, hail, etc.
   • 1662 Thomas Salusbury, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogue 2):

     It might be also, that attracted by that great void Vacuum ... all the ambients would be rarified, and particularly, the air.

3. (uncountable, music) A type of modern music that creates a relaxing and peaceful atmosphere.
   • 1996, SPIN magazine (volume 12, number 3, page 116)

     Ambient can be flabby synth mulch that needs to access cyberism and external philosophies to convince you you're not being scammed.

• (music): ambient music, chillout

• “ambient” in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, →ISBN.

• ambient in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• ambient in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

ambient m (plural ambients)

1. ambience, atmosphere
2. environment

• Audio

  (file)

ambient (not comparable)

1. ambient

ambient m (plural ambienc)

1. environment

ambient

1. third-person plural future active indicative of ambiō

ambient m (uncountable)

1. (music) ambient (genre of electronic music with a slow, atmospheric tone)