Cycle

How to spell cycle

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cycle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cycle mean?

1. nounA series of events or stages that repeats in the same order.
2. verbTo ride a bicycle, or to move through events that repeat in a regular order.
3. nounA bicycle or similar pedal-driven machine.

Cycle in a sentence

• noun

  The washing machine finished its rinse cycle after an hour.

• verb

  She likes to cycle to work along the canal path.

• noun

  He chained his cycle to the railings outside the shop.

• noun

  The business plans around the seasonal sales cycle each year.

• verb

  The heating system will cycle on and off through the night.

• noun

  The shop sold every cycle in its summer clearance.

Where does cycle come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek kyklos, which literally meant a circle, a ring, or a wheel, and by extension any round or recurring thing. The Greek term passed into Late Latin as cyclus, keeping the sense of a recurring round of events, and English took it up in the late 1300s, at first chiefly to describe a connected series of poems or legends grouped around one theme. From that came the broader idea of any sequence of events that returns to its starting point and repeats, such as the cycle of the seasons. The bicycle and tricycle borrowed the same root because their defining feature is the wheel, and 'cycle' became a casual shortening for the two-wheeled machine in the 1800s, then a verb for riding one. The 'cy' spelling preserves the Greek upsilon, which is exactly why English keeps the soft c and the y where a writer might expect 'si' or an i.

How the word is built

• cycl- (from Greek kyklos: circle, ring, wheel)
• -e