# cycle

Pronunciation: say "SY-kuhl" /ˈsaɪ.kəl/

## Noun

1. A series of events or stages that happen in a fixed order and then repeat from the start.
   - Simple: A set of things that happen one after another, again and again, in the same order.
   - _The economy moves through a cycle of growth, slowdown, and recovery._
   - _Nitrogen passes through a natural cycle as it moves between soil, plants, and air._
3. The period of time, or stretch of space, taken up by one complete round of a repeating process, from its start until it begins again.
   - Simple: The time or distance needed for one complete set of events to happen.
   - _Each cycle of the tide takes roughly twelve and a half hours._
   - _The company's billing cycle runs from the first to the last day of the month._
5. A program on a washing machine, dishwasher, or similar appliance that carries out a set sequence of operations.
   - Simple: A setting on a washing machine, dishwasher, or similar machine that runs a fixed set of steps.
   - _She set the washer to the delicate cycle before leaving for work._
   - _The dishwasher beeps twice when the cycle finishes._
6. A pedal-driven vehicle, such as a bicycle, tricycle, or unicycle, or a motor vehicle with two or three wheels; often used before another noun, as in cycle lane.
   - Simple: A vehicle that you pedal, such as a bike, or a motor vehicle with two or three wheels.
   - _Commuters parked their cycles in the racks outside the station._
   - _He bought a secondhand cycle and rode it across the city all summer._
7. A group of poems, songs, plays, novels, or other works on a shared theme or story that together form a connected whole.
   - Simple: A set of poems, songs, or other works of art that belong together.
   - _Schubert's song cycle traces a heartbroken wanderer's journey through a winter landscape._
   - _The medieval mystery plays formed a cycle performed over several days._
8. A scheduled period of weeks or months during which a performance-enhancing substance or supplement is taken, followed by a period when it is not taken or the dose is lower.
   - Simple: A planned period of weeks when someone takes a performance drug or supplement, then a break or a lower dose.
   - _He ran an eight-week cycle of creatine before tapering off._
   - _Bodybuilders often plan their cycles around competition dates._
9. A single complete rotation, whether of a wheel, a motor shaft, or any other rotating object.
   - Simple: One complete turn of something that spins or goes around.
   - _The old turntable makes one full cycle about every two seconds._
   - _The meter counts a single cycle each time the fan blade sweeps all the way around._
11. A unit of frequency equal to one complete repetition per second; the same as a hertz.
   - Simple: A unit for measuring how many times something happens each second. One cycle equals one hertz.
   - _Before the 1960s, American radio dials were marked in kilocycles rather than kilohertz._
   - _American homes ran on 60-cycle current, which engineers today would call 60 hertz._
12. A baseball achievement in which one player hits a single, a double, a triple, and a home run during the same game.
   - Simple: In baseball, when one player hits a single, a double, a triple, and a home run in the same game.
   - _The rookie hit for the cycle on Tuesday, capping the night with a triple in the eighth inning._
   - _After his triple in the eighth inning, the rookie needed only a home run to hit for the cycle._
13. A closed walk or path in a graph that starts and ends at the same vertex, with or without repeated vertices allowed depending on the definition.
   - Simple: In math, a path through connected points that ends at the same point where it started.
   - _The graph contains a cycle of length four through these vertices._
   - _Trees are exactly the connected graphs that contain no cycles._
14. An extremely long span of time, comparable to an entire age.
   - Simple: A very long period of time, often covering many years or whole ages.

## Verb

2. To ride a bicycle or other similar vehicle, such as a tricycle or unicycle.
   - Simple: To ride a bicycle or another vehicle with pedals.
   - _Thousands of commuters cycle into downtown every weekday morning._
   - _He is cycling across the state this week to raise money for the hospital._
4. To pass through a recurring series of stages, or to cause something to pass through a recurring series of stages.
   - Simple: To go through a repeating set of steps, or to put something through a repeating set of steps.
   - _Markets cycle between optimism and fear as conditions shift._
   - _Engineers cycled the engine through thousands of test runs before approving the design._
10. To turn the power to a device off and then back on.
   - Simple: To turn a machine's power off and then on again.
   - _The technician cycled the power to clear the fault._
   - _Try to cycle the breaker before calling an electrician._

## Other meanings

- (noun) One takeoff and landing of an aircraft, counted as a measure of wear because each one stresses the airframe.
- (noun) An orderly list of events or observances for a given period; a calendar.
- (noun) A ring of plant parts, or a complete spiral series from one part up to, but excluding, the next part directly above it.
- (verb) To maintain possession of the puck in the offensive zone by passing it in a loop along the boards, from behind the goal up the side and back.
- (noun) A single discharge of a taser.
- (noun) An imaginary circle or orbit in the heavens; one of the celestial spheres of ancient astronomy.
- (noun) In algebraic topology, a chain whose boundary is zero.

## Origin

The root is Proto-Indo-European *kʷékʷlos ("circle, wheel"), which came through Proto-Hellenic to Ancient Greek κύκλος (kúklos, "circle"), then to Late Latin cyclus and Middle English cicle ("a fixed period of years"). Chakra and wheel are doublets of it.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/cycle (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).