around: the space, edge, or people that encircle something on every side
At its core this word marks what lies on every side of something. It pictures a circle drawn around a center, and almost everything it does grows out of that one picture.
Most often it works like the English phrase "all around" or "round about," describing how something wraps or sits on every side: a wall around a courtyard, blood put around an altar, an enemy camped around a city. Hebrew likes to double it for emphasis, saying in effect "around and around," to stress that nothing is left open.
The same idea then names the things that do the encircling. In the plural it can mean the surrounding area or a place's outskirts, and very commonly the surrounding peoples: the nations that ring Israel and so often press in on her. The step from "on every side" to "the neighbors on every side" is small, which is why one Hebrew word covers ground that English splits among around, surroundings, and neighbors.