1 a completely round flat shape:
Cut out two circles of paper.
seealsoSEMICIRCLE
2 the line that encloses a circle:
Draw a circle. * She walked the horse round in a circle.
seealsoANTARCTICCIRCLE, ARCTICCIRCLE, TURNINGCIRCLE
3 a thing or a group of people or things shaped like a circle:
a circle of trees / chairs * The children stood in a circle.
seealsoCORNCIRCLE, CROPCIRCLE
4 (BrE) (also balcony AmE, BrE) an upper floor of a theatre or cinema/movie theater where the seats are arranged in curved rows:
We had seats in the circle.
seealsoDRESSCIRCLE
5 a group of people who are connected because they have the same interests, jobs, etc:
the family circle * She's well known in theatrical circles. * a large / wide circle of friends
seealsoCHARMEDCIRCLE, INNERCIRCLE, VICIOUSCIRCLE
IDIOMS
come, turn, etc. full circle to return to the situation in which you started, after a series of events or experiences
go round in circles to work hard at sth or discuss sth without making any progress
run round in circles (informal) to be busy doing sth without achieving anything important or making progress
Part of speech: verb
1 ~ (around) (above / over sb/sth) to move in a circle, especially in the air:
[V] Seagulls circled around above his head. * He flew lower and circled around the lake. * [VN] The plane circled the airport to burn up excess fuel.
2 [VN] to draw a circle around sth:
Spelling mistakes are circled in red ink.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for circle is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is circle a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, circle is tagged as noun.
Does circle appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — circle appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
