Forum: ell.stackexchange.com
Tags: <word-request><phrase-request>
Title: What do you call this nearby position?
Question: Let's say you are in a classroom. You are the red square. What to call the position of the yellow seats in relation to you?  I thought of using "next," but I think that doesn't apply to the seats in front and behind the red square.  I also thought of "encircling," but that would include the green squares on the corners.  Example sentence:   The classmate who's bullying Mark must be sitting __

Answers:
sents: text: The yellow squared are "adjacent" to the red square.
text: From: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/adjacent Definition of adjacent1a:
text: not distant : NEARBY the city and adjacent suburbsb: having a common endpoint or border adjacent lots adjacent sides of a trianglec: immediately preceding or following In this case "b" is the relevant definition, "having a common endpoint or border".
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/94904/jwh20
score: 29
sents: text: In this particular case, I would probably say, "The classmate who's bullying Mark must be sitting in one of the four adjacent seats."
text: Saying "the four adjacent seats" makes the sentence unambiguous, and it avoids using the word "orthogonally", which is a technical term that I wouldn't expect every native speaker to know.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/2020/Tanner Swett
score: 12
sents: text: They are orthogonally adjacent to the red square.
text: The green squares at the corners of the red square are diagonally adjacent .
text: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/164704/is-there-one-word-for-both-horizontal-or-vertical-but-not-diagonal-adjacency/164759
text: If you want to be very general and elicit a subsequent barrage of clarifying questions from your intended audience about the inclusion of the diagonally adjacent squares, you could say they border or are adjacent to the red square.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/36224/EllieK
score: 10
sents: text: You could use a number of words including: adjacent
text: surrounding Adjacent would be my preference - note that the word has a more specific meaning in mathematics, but in English grammar can mean "next to" in any direction , including to the sides, in front or behind.
text: On its own, "next to" does tend to mean to the left or right sides.
text: Your suggestion of "encircling" doesn't sound quite right as the pattern of the chairs in your image is not a circle, which is is what it specifically means - to form a circle around.
text: "Surrounding" is synonymous with "encircling", but does not specifically mean the shape of a circle.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/66325/Astralbee
score: 4
sents: text: "One seat away from Mark" also identifies the seats on each side, and in front and back.
text: It does not exclude the diagonally adjacent seats.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/28413/user8356
score: 4
sents: text: Nobody has come out and said it yet, so I will.
text: There's nothing whatsoever wrong with "next".
text: The classmate who's bullying Mark must be sitting next to him.
text: This is perfectly normal, acceptable, every-day English that will be perfectly understood and will not seem awkward or weird at all.
text: It applies perfectly well to the seats ahead and behind as much as it does to the ones to the sides.
text: Without the drawing, a speaker may also consider the four corner desks also to be "next" to the central one, but this is not really important.
text: I think the rest of the answers here are making this much more complicated than it needs to be.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/8589/J...
score: 3
sents: text: Immediate You could say that those positions are immediately surrounding the central point If we look at the definitions for " Immediate ", we can see: Having no object or space intervening; nearest or next and Having a direct bearing
text: This becomes more clear if we remove the space from between the objects in the image.
text: The green objects are obstructing the yellow objects.
text: In other words, there is no direct, unobstructed path from the red square to any of the yellow ones.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/117619/AlgoRythm
score: 0
sents: text: Another term would be " contiguous ": Definition of contiguous 1: being in actual contact : touching along a boundary or at a point "the 48 contiguous states"
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/81057/Codex24
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
 You could use a number of words including:   adjacent, surrounding   Adjacent  would be my preference - note that the word has a more specific meaning in mathematics, but in English grammar can mean "next to" in  any direction , including to the sides, in front or behind.
The following are all suitable options: "contiguous", "next to", "immediately surrounding", "adjacent", "orthogonally adjacent", "diagonally adjacent", "border" — "encircle" is a less likely option.