vicious circle
5
3.9
- noun
- /ˈvɪʃəs ˈsɜrkl/
:
círculo vicioso
- The difficulty is that a vicious circle exists between these goals and the goal of economic development.
- create a vicious circle
Anything that mentally breaks up the the vicious circle, so to speak.
- Anything that mentally breaks up the the vicious circle, so to speak.
- The thing is, right, one of these is a vicious circle, and one of them is a virtuous circle.
- It's kind of like this vicious circle.
- You see defence budgets all over the world are are skyrocketing and this is a vicious circle.
- And the question is, how do you get out of this sort of vicious circle?
- Second, how to break that vicious circle and get out of it and get back into a creative and positive routine.
- But I think that there is a kind of vicious circle.
- What we have today might be instead a vicious circle.
- So it's this vicious circle of she was always going to win.
- So it's this really vicious circle and you point fingers a few different ways, but really just like, no more unboxing embargoes please.
Examples
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In short, oil and gas rents have led to a vicious circle of conflicts and authoritarianism in MENA.
Academic text (2014) -
Families were trapped in a vicious circle of low wages, lower benefits and malnutrition.
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So yeah, I think it was an, an extremely vicious circle and I was at the centre of it.
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Who, or what, can free us from this vicious circle?
Academic text (2007) -
Second, how to break that vicious circle and get out of it and get back into a creative and positive routine.
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From a practical point of view, the first question should be how to avoid falling into this vicious circle.
Academic text (1995) -
Families were trapped in a vicious circle of low wages, lower benefits and malnutrition.
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The vicious circle in MENA, however, can be broken, as the recent Arab uprisings have shown.
Academic text (2014) -
It's a classic vicious circle: more tourists bring more hotels, which bring more tourists.
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The difficulty is that a vicious circle exists between these goals and the goal of economic development.
Synonyms
14
4.8
A situation where one problem causes another and makes things worse
4
4.1
A repeating cycle of events that seems pointless and has no end
Antonyms
How Persistent
Surface Forms
Morphology
vicious + circle
The meaning ('a harmful cycle in which problems reinforce each other') is directly derivable from 'vicious' (harmful/severe) + 'circle' (a recurring cycle), so the compound transparently signals a harmful/reinforcing loop. This metaphorical but regular composition is common across languages (e.g. Spanish 'círculo vicioso', French 'cercle vicieux') and follows predictable semantics, so a B1 learner knowing the constituents will likely infer the meaning.
Etymology
The noun vicious circle uses the image of a circle where something vicious, meaning 'harmful', keeps coming back and makes the problem worse. So the phrase means 'a situation where one problem causes another, and the problems keep getting worse'.