Meaning & use
full circle
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Meanings
phraseidiom
Used to say that events or changes have taken someone or something back to exactly where they started.
Grammar: Usually follows come, go or turn: things came full circle, not things came a full circle.
Patterns
- come full circle
- go full circle
- bring something full circle
After decades abroad, she moved back into the village where she was born, and her life had come full circle.
Fashion has gone full circle, and the baggy jeans my father wore are cool again.
The company began as a two-person garage startup and, after its collapse, ended up as two people in a garage.
phrasefixed phrase
Making a complete turn of 360 degrees around a central point.
Grammar: Literal and fairly rare; it follows a verb of turning: the dancer spun full circle.
Patterns
- turn full circle
- swing full circle
The weather vane swung full circle during the storm.
He turned full circle on the spot, searching the crowd for a familiar face.
Common combinations
- come full circle
- The debate has come full circle, and we are arguing about the same issue as ten years ago.
- go full circle
- Her career went full circle when she returned to teach at her old school.
- bring something full circle
- The reunion brought the family story full circle.
- things come full circle
- Sometimes things come full circle in ways nobody could plan.
- feel like it has come full circle
- Standing in the classroom again, I felt it had all come full circle.
Synonyms and how they differ
- back to square one
- This is more informal and suggests failure, because all progress has been lost, whereas full circle can feel satisfying or ironic.
- round trip
- This describes a journey out and back, while full circle is about a change in situation or ideas, not travel.
- cyclical
- This is an adjective describing something that repeats in a pattern, whereas full circle describes one completed return.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: full circle or vicious circle?
full circle vs vicious circle
A vicious circle is a bad situation that keeps feeding itself, while full circle only means a return to the start, which may be pleasant.
Practice
After years of travelling, Marta returned to open a bakery in her grandmother's old shop, so her life had come ____.
Choose one answer.
The idiom is fixed as come full circle with no article or preposition; the other options add words the idiom does not allow.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “full circle”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.