corral

noun

1. 1

   An enclosure for livestock, especially a circular one.

   We had a small corral out back where we kept our pet llama.

2. 2

   An enclosure or area to concentrate a dispersed group.

   Please return the shopping carts to the corral.

3. 3

   A circle of wagons, either for the purpose of trapping livestock, or for defense.

   The wagon train formed a corral to protect against Comanche attacks.

verb

1. 1

   To capture or round up.

   Between us, we managed to corral the puppies in the kitchen.

   I corralled the judge, and we started off across the fields, in no very mild state of fear of that gentleman's wife, whose vigilance was seldom relaxed. And thus we came by a circuitous route to Mohair, the judge occupied by his own guilty thoughts, and I by others not less disturbing.

   By the end of this year the work of 168 coal depots scattered throughout the Birmingham Division will have been coralled [sic] into about two dozen concentration depots.

   They provide an unprecedented inside view of the continuing clampdown in Xinjiang, in which the authorities have corralled as many as a million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others into internment camps and prisons over the past three years.

2. 2

   To place inside of a corral.

   After we corralled the last steer, we headed off to the chuck wagon for dinner.

3. 3

   To make a circle of vehicles, as of wagons so as to form a corral.

   The cattle drivers corralled their wagons for the night.

Forms

plural

corrals

past tense

corraled, corralled

past participle

corraled, corralled

present participle

corraling, corralling

third person singular

corrals