Word of the Day:

“Many New Yorkers revel in the city’s ambient rumble—the thump of a bass echoing between buildings, the slap of domino tiles on a card table, the growl of off-road bikes rushing down the block.” — Yessenia Funes, Curbed, 11 Aug. 2023

More example sentences

Biologists explore the effects of ambient light on plants; acoustics experts try to control ambient sound; and meteorologists monitor the temperature of ambient air. All this can make ambient seem like a technical term, but when it first saw light of day, that all-encompassing adjective was as likely to be used in poetry as in science, as when Alexander Pope wrote of a mountain “whose tow’ring summit ambient clouds conceal’d.” Both poets and scientists use ambient today to describe things that surround—that is, exist on all sides of—someone or something. And by “all” we mean all. One would not likely describe someone sitting in the middle of their lawn as being amid “ambient grass,” for example. Ambient, which comes from the Latin verb ambīre meaning “to surround, encircle, or embrace,” most often describes things—such as noise or humidity—that are all around someone, from top to bottom.