Wearing or having a girdle (belt); surrounded or encircled as if by a girdle; or (in forestry) having had bark stripped in a circle around the trunk.
Past participle of 'girdle' (Old English 'gyrdel,' meaning belt). The forestry sense developed later, using 'girdled' to describe trees damaged by removing a circular band of bark.
Foresters discovered that girdling a tree—removing a circle of bark—is a gentler way to kill it than chopping, and the metaphor extended to anything wrapped tightly around something else.
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