Meaning & use
cycle
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Meanings
nouncountable
A series of events or stages that happen again and again in the same order.
Grammar: Countable and often followed by of: the cycle of the seasons.
Patterns
- the cycle of something
- a cycle of something
The water cycle moves rain from the sea to the clouds and back.
Poverty can trap families in a cycle that is hard to break.
The moon completes its cycle in about a month.
nouncountable
One complete run of a machine's program, such as in a washing machine or engine.
Grammar: Usually describes a machine's setting: a quick wash cycle.
Patterns
- a wash cycle
- on a cycle
The delicate cycle takes forty minutes.
The engine goes through four cycles with each turn.
Select a short cycle if the dishes are not very dirty.
nouncountableBritish
A bicycle or motorcycle.
Grammar: Mainly British or in compounds: cycle lane, cycle shop.
Patterns
- a cycle path
He locked his cycle outside the library.
The town built a new cycle lane along the river.
She repaired the old cycle in her garage.
verbintransitiveBritish
To ride a bicycle, for travel, exercise, or sport.
Grammar: Usually no object: she cycles to work.
Patterns
- cycle to somewhere
- cycle along something
I cycle to work every morning along the canal.
They cycled across France last summer.
Do you want to cycle to the beach?
Word forms
| third person singular | cycles |
|---|---|
| past tense and past participle | cycled |
| present participle | cycling |
| plural | cycles |
Common combinations
- life cycle
- A butterfly's life cycle has four stages.
- vicious cycle
- Stress and lack of sleep can create a vicious cycle.
- break the cycle
- Education can help break the cycle of poverty.
- economic cycle
- Business profits rise and fall with the economic cycle.
- cycle to work
- More employees now cycle to work in the summer.
- wash cycle
- The towels need a hot wash cycle.
Synonyms and how they differ
- sequence
- Sequence is any ordered series, but cycle returns to its starting point and repeats.
- round
- Round is more informal and suggests a repeated pattern of activities, as in a round of meetings.
- rotation
- Rotation suggests turning or taking turns in a fixed order, whereas cycle focuses on repeated stages.
- bike
- Bike is the everyday word for the vehicle, while cycle sounds more formal or British.
Word family
Commonly confused: cycle or cycle vs. psyche?
cycle vs cycle vs. psyche
Both sound similar in fast speech, but a psyche is a person's mind or spirit, while a cycle is a repeating series.
Practice
Which phrase best completes: Frequent arguments and poor sleep created a vicious ___ in their household?
Choose one answer.
A vicious cycle is a fixed phrase for a bad pattern that repeats and worsens. The other options do not form that idiom.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “cycle”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.