Maybe they’ll have a version that way to unseat Johnny Cash & Family - Will The Circle Be Unbroken and the dozens of others recorded by all sorts of people.
I’m not intending condescension to you or anyone. Posters round here often note evidence that SDMB literacy is exemplary, so it’s only fair to note the reverse when it arises.
I happen to be on the right side of this one, but I make no claim to always be so.
Based on this Google Fight, I’m not convinced
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=loss+leader&word2=lost+leader
…aaaaand you succeed in coming off as condescending in your post stating that condescension is not your intent.
- I appreciate learning that vicious *circle *came first and that *circle *can be used to mean cycle
- I don’t appreciate being told I am not literate - simply offensive and untrue
- I don’t think hearing “I am right” - other than in a fun, jokey sort of way, which I would grant you - is appropriate. There is no right, per se - when I have spent years talking to CEO’s of billion-dollar corporations about vicious and virtuous cycles, I am comfortable that it is appropriate and correct for the business context I have used it in.
Sorry for the hijack - I find this type of stuff fascinating. Please carry on.
I thought we settled this long ago. It’s “circle.”
Or “Sid.”
I don’t think I’ve ever even heard “vicious circle”.
Well, I disagree. A literate* person would recognize that the OP question was looking for “vicious circle,” and that “vicious cycle,” no matter how widely used, is a corruption of the longer-standing term.
- You understand I’m using this to mean “knowledgeable or educated, familiar with literature,” not “able to read and write,” right? And that it’s always a relative term? I’m just saying that, in this instance, the SDMB community isn’t as smart as we like to think we are.
Maybe I should have left it to DianaG.
That’s the pithiest response, in that it encapsulates all of the following:
- Dorothy Parker was a key member of the “Vicious Circle” of the Algonquin Round Table lunch set and discussion group.
- Dorothy Parker (though not without personal foibles) was superlatively literate, and could be witheringly contemptuous of those who were not.
- One must be somewhat literate to know these things.
By the way, it seems that “virtuous cycle” is also a corruption of “circle.” Probably “virtuous circle” itself is constructed by analogy to “vicious circle.”
Amusingly, Wikipedia’s associated disambiguation and discussion pages include several “vicious cycle” usages.
Anyway, WordMan, if you’re really giving talks centered on these concepts, I suggest you start using the “circle” constructions. A small percentage of your audience will think you smarter, and the rest won’t notice the difference.
One must be somewhat literate about what it now an especially arcane area of trivia to know these things. There’s no need to congratulate oneself too much for being all brushed-up on one particular Jeopardy! category.
I for one am perfectly content to thumb my nose at what’s Correct in this case to employ what makes more sense to me, just as I am perfectly content to thumb my nose at prescriptivist grammarians who tell me that split infinitives are verboten in English.
It rather sounds like Malcolm–who I usually think of as a precise speaker–had it right, but then a moment’s uncertainty about which way it was, and introduced the “Or…” to cover himself.
Yeah, no wonder.
Again, nobody should feel bad for using the wrong word. Be glad to learn the right one.
M-W aside, those saying that “circle” can serve a metaphor for the literal “cycle” in an idiomatic phrase are way off base. Sing it with me, now:
It’s the CYYYYYYYYCLE of liiiiiiiiiiife…
…what?
Oh, man. This XKCD implies cycle. That kind of bums me out.
I think I need some nachos for solace.
Ahem.
Generally, one’s pool of knowledge must be both wide and deep for one to accumulate what less educated people call “arcane pieces of trivia.”
Thumbing your nose doesn’t make you right. It makes you petulant.
My immediate thought was that it should be “son of a bitch”. I don’t know why. Then I realized what the poll was about and voted for “cycle” as “vicious circle” doesn’t make sense (to me).
Cabaret.
I’d say circle, but cycle is also fine.
For those of saying that circle makes no sense, have you never seen the kind of diagram which has a start-point leading to a second point which leads back to the third point (perhaps with extra points in between)? That’s represented as a cycle, because you end back at the starting point. Circle makes as much literal sense as cycle.
Roundabouts in Northampton are vicious circles. Vicious cycles are what Boadicea would have ridden in Amsterdam.
…soise.
What? I like soup.
Traditionally its circle. I suspect cycle has become more commonly used due to domestic violence and Lenore Walkers ‘cycle of violence’ model or variants of it.
Otara
There’s more…
Point to the joint between your hand and arm and make it go “raaar”. What’s that?
A terror-wrist.
“Vicious circle” is how I’ve always heard it. I even remember something satirical in Mad magazine or the like as a child that showed a juvenile-delinquent circle beating up on another geometric object.