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vicious-circle

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

14 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

Wiktionary

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "vicious-circle", 14-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "vicious-circle" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "vicious-circle" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

vicious circle is aEnglishnoun. It means: A situation in which the response to one problem creates a chain of problems, each making it more difficult to solve the original one.

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Key facts for vicious circle
PropertyValue
Headwordvicious circle
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters14
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

vicious circle is not present in the top-100,000 ranked English corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for vicious circle is 14 letters long, classified as anoun. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for vicious circle in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is vicious circle, spelled V-I-C-I-O-U-S- -C-I-R-C-L-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    A situation in which the response to one problem creates a chain of problems, each making it more difficult to solve the original one.
  2. 2
    A fallacy in which the premise is used to prove a conclusion which is then used to prove the premise.

Synonyms

Antonyms

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "vicious circle"?
"vicious circle" is spelled V-I-C-I-O-U-S- -C-I-R-C-L-E.
What does "vicious circle" mean?
As a noun, "vicious circle" means: A situation in which the response to one problem creates a chain of problems, each making it more difficult to solve the original one.
What language does "vicious circle" come from?
"vicious circle" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby English words

Other entries that begin with the letter V in our English index:

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.