cycle
See also: -cycle
Contents
EnglishEdit
PronunciationEdit
EtymologyEdit
From Late Latin cyclus, from Ancient Greek κύκλος (kúklos), reduplicated form of a Proto-Indo-European *kʷékʷlos (“circle, wheel”). Cognates include Sanskrit चक्र (cakrá), Latin colus, Old English hwēol (English wheel), English ancillary
NounEdit
cycle (plural cycles)
- An interval of space or time in which one set of events or phenomena is completed.
- the cycle of the seasons, or of the year
- Burke
- Wages […] bear a full proportion […] to the medium of provision during the last bad cycle of twenty years.
- A complete rotation of anything.
- A process that returns to its beginning and then repeats itself in the same sequence.
-
2013 August 10, “Legal highs: A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:
- No sooner has a [synthetic] drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one. These “legal highs” are sold for the few months it takes the authorities to identify and ban them, and then the cycle begins again.
-
- The members of the sequence formed by such a process.
- (music) In musical set theory, an interval cycle is the set of pitch classes resulting from repeatedly applying the same interval class to the starting pitch class.
- The interval cycle C4 consists of the pitch classes 0, 4 and 8; when starting on E, it is realised as the pitches E, G# and C.
- A series of poems, songs or other works of art.
- The "Ring of the Nibelung" is a cycle of four operas by Richard Wagner, the famous nineteenth-century German composer.
- A programme on a washing machine, dishwasher, or other such device.
- Put the washing in on a warm cycle.
- the spin cycle
- A pedal-powered vehicle, such as a unicycle, bicycle, or tricycle; or, motorized vehicle that has either two or three wheels, such as a motorbike, motorcycle, motorized tricycle, or motortrike.
- (baseball) A single, a double, a triple, and a home run hit by the same player in the same game.
- Jones hit for the cycle in the game.
- (graph theory) A closed walk or path, with or without repeated vertices allowed.
- An imaginary circle or orbit in the heavens; one of the celestial spheres.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Milton to this entry?)
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Burke to this entry?)
- An age; a long period of time.
- Tennyson
- Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
- Tennyson
- An orderly list for a given time; a calendar.
- Evelyn
- We […] present our gardeners with a complete cycle of what is requisite to be done throughout every month of the year.
- Evelyn
- (botany) One entire round in a circle or a spire.
- a cycle or set of leaves
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Gray to this entry?)
Usage notesEdit
- (aviation sense): One take-off and landing of an aircraft is a cycle, referring to a pressurisation cycle which places stresses on the fuselage.
- (baseball sense): As in the example sentence, one is usually said to hit for the cycle. However, other uses also occur, such as hit a cycle and complete the cycle.
Derived termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
vehicle — see bicycle
complete rotation
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process
series of poems etc.
program on a washing machine
graph theory: closed (directed) walk or path
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VerbEdit
cycle (third-person singular simple present cycles, present participle cycling, simple past and past participle cycled)
- To ride a bicycle or other cycle.
- To go through a cycle or to put through a cycle.
- (electronics) To turn power off and back on
- Avoid cycling the device unnecessarily.
- (ice hockey) To maintain a team's possession of the puck in the offensive zone by handling and passing the puck in a loop from the boards near the goal up the side boards and passing to back to the boards near the goal
- They have their cycling game going tonight.
Related termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
to ride a cycle
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to go through a cycle or to put through a cycle
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to turn power off and back on
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AnagramsEdit
FrenchEdit
PronunciationEdit
EtymologyEdit
From Late Latin cyclus.
NounEdit
cycle m (plural cycles)
External linksEdit
- “cycle” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).