I immediately thought “lie”.
I’m in the cycle crowd, for reasons already expounded upon.
Yes, of course. Because we live in a world where the only choices are reverence or petulance, with no option for having a sense of humor about these things.
My WAG: Yes, you have. You just didn’t notice it because outside of set phrases, “circle” and “cycle” are relatively interchangeable in English.
“vicious circle”: About 1,750,000 results
“vicious cycle”: About 1,210,000 results
And, when I start typing in the search box, at “vicious c” the *first *suggestion is “vicious circle,” *followed by *“vicious cycle.”
Nitpicky distinctions like this are the hallmark of literate people–i.e., people who read a shit-ton.
The rule about splitting infinitives is external and artificial to the language. Even a knowledgeable prescriptivist wouldn’t say it’s “correct.” On the other hand, even a descriptivist will concede that it’s possible for a speaker to make an error in their speech. And “vicious cycle,” while it may be at *least *edging towards legitimacy if it isn’t there yet, at the very least *started *as an error. Cf. “cole slaw” vs. “cold slaw.”
What the hell? Never before this thread have I ever heard even suggested that it might be anything other than “circle”.
Of course not, and my post was actually meant humorously, if a bit bitingly. You see, mocking other people’s actual knowledge isn’t really less obnoxious than correcting people over trivial things.
Right. I’ve never heard it either. From that alone, I’d guess that any significant use of “vicious cycle” is fairly recent in origin.
Possibly it came about from that rich source of false etymology and guesswork, corporate buzzwords. But I’d wager that only the Internet (and the fact that one can publish things on the Internet that have not been vetted by an editor) has given it anything like enough prominence that there’s even a question. Sure, you can find 1.2 million hits on it, but on the Internet you can find untold millions of hits on all sorts of things we know for a fact aren’t true, including misspellings.
I *really *don’t get that mindset, especially on a board dedicated to fighting ignorance.
There are *plenty *of incompetent editors and proofers out there.
Including a Lynyrd Skynyrd album and a hip hop album. The Wikipedia entry is very bad on this issue. It defines virtuous circle and vicious circle extensively but but does not discuss the etymology or history of the term at all, and it repeatedly uses “virtuous cycle” and “vicious cycle” interchangeably with the original terms. The page also links to a Wall Street Journal article that uses “vicious cycle.”
I understand your logic, but I don’t think this is true. I’ve been hearing the phrasing with “cycle” for as long as I can remember, and – perhaps somewhat surprisingly – I can remember back quite a while before the internet was prominent at all.
Cycle? Fucking cycle is just trailing by six votes? I weep for the English language.
–Cliffy
I don’t understand why both can’t be correct. Just because one came first doesn’t make the other wrong. Maybe you should next argue over how to pronounce “banal”.
Persons who say vicious cycle are not to be trusted.
bastard.
My mom told me about an interview she overheard on the radio one time where a guy kept saying something really “sticks in his claw.” The way language works is that we develop set expressions. Replacing one of the words in that expression with a word that sounds similar and lends a similar meaning or connotation is wrong. Now, it can *become *acceptable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an error when it first starts happening.
Do you have special homing bees for that? Oh please say yes.
It’s not so much that I have special homing bees for that, as it is that the bees’ targeting program can be modified at will. Otherwise I’d have to be constantly breeding new bees, which would involve raiding the countryside for new breeding stocks, and before long we’d have some sort of weird colony collapse syndrome on our hands.
Anyway, I have tessered over the remote and assigned 4,696 bees to your service. Just remember that they will not on any account attack Kristen Bell.
Is there a programming manual? I don’t see a programming manual.
Saving her for later, eh?
I would SAY circle.
I would write/think cycle.
It’s cycle, of course! We seem to be losing the fight against ignorance.
Eh. I don’t recall ever hearing/reading it before this thread; but if I did, I would have dismissed it as an obvious error.
Sore point with me: I see a lot of homonym (or near-homonym) errors, like saying “the missile honed in on its target.”
Thank you for not using honing bees.
You have to dance around shaking your fanny.