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1.1The period of time taken to complete a single sequence of events.
‘the cells are shed over a cycle of twenty-eight days’
‘Dr Perrett said that hepatitis A has a natural periodic cycle of about seven years, which would explain two outbreaks in such quick succession.’
1.2technical A recurring series of successive operations or states, as in the working of an internal combustion engine, or in the alternation of an electric current or a wave.
‘the familiar four cycles of intake, combustion, ignition, and exhaust’
‘He then suggested enhancing the technique by combining pressure with powerful cycles of ultrasonic energy.’
‘A Stirling Engine is a mechanical device, which operates on a closed looping thermodynamic cycle.’
‘At the sub-femtosecond level, a laser pulse contains only a few cycles of the carrier electromagnetic wave.’
‘The quantum and classical Carnot engines therefore operate in the same way - a closed cycle of two isothermal and two adiabatic processes.’
‘Hydrogen must replace fossil fuels through efficient production using solar radiation, thermochemical cycles, or bioinspired catalysts to split water.’
1.3Biology A recurring series of events or metabolic processes in the lifetime of a plant or animal.
‘the storks' breeding cycle’
‘Two things I've been interested in recently are the brain's visual processing, and the metabolic cycle.’
‘This causes problems for the plant because if a broad band of proteins have been denatured, they can't continue with their normal metabolic cycles.’
‘Following this method does not overtax the body's natural cycles of metabolic dips, blood-pressure peaks and valleys.’
‘As a consequence, most biological processes, from sleep-wake cycles in people to leaf movements in plants, follow a daily, circadian rhythm.’
‘These metabolic cycles allow large and rapid changes in the net rate of sucrose breakdown in response to the demand in the cell, even though the steady-state concentrations of metabolites hardly change.’
1.4Biochemistry A series of successive metabolic reactions in which one of the products is regenerated and reused.
‘PCR was carried out in limited cycles in which PCR products exponentially increased and reflected the initial quantity of RNA.’
1.5Ecology The movement of a simple substance through the soil, rocks, water, atmosphere, and living organisms of the earth.
‘Wetland's microbes, plants, and wildlife are part of global cycles for water and nitrogen.’
‘Looking at the needs of diverse forests and soils, and the cycles of water and air, the evidence suggests that North America, the planet also, is already overpopulated by humans.’
‘Once cooled to body temperature, the water then completes its cycle by being returned to the ground where it slowly irrigates a grove of mesquite trees that form a new desert park.’
‘Deforestation also can have regional climatic effects because trees are a key link in the evapotranspiration cycle between soil and the atmosphere.’
‘One form of interaction is the cycle of moisture: water evaporates to form clouds from which water falls again as rain.’
1.6Computing A single set of hardware operations, especially that by which memory is accessed and an item is transferred to or from it, to the point at which the memory may be accessed again.
‘The resources that are important from an active networking point of view include CPU cycles, main memory, and outgoing network bandwidth.’
‘Grid software makes collections of computers more efficient by allowing them to share CPU cycles, memory and other resources so closely that they act almost like a single computer.’
‘An important consideration is the fact that network resources, measured as throughput in MB per second are a fixed resource just as disk space and CPU cycles are.’
‘These are typically scientific or technical and require a great number of computer processing cycles or access to large amounts of data.’
‘The workload is executed on simulated processors where each machine instruction of the target processor can take many machine cycles of the host computer.’
1.7Physics A cycle per second; one hertz.
‘The sounds emitted may be undetectable to the human ear, which on average can hear between 16 and 16,000 cycles per second.’
‘The rate at which an object vibrates is measured in Hertz or cycles per second.’
‘Optical clocks, with frequencies measured near 10 cycles per second, promise greater accuracy.’
‘When the researchers apply voltage to the source, the arm begins vibrating at a frequency of 350 to 400 million cycles per second between the electrodes.’
‘Different frequencies, measured in hertz, or cycles per second, indicate different levels and types of activities.’
2A complete set or series.
‘the painting is one of a cycle of seven’
‘The Arthurian Legends are a cycle of stories that has been shaped and passed down through over fourteen hundred years of English history.’
‘The first and last stories in the cycle most clearly evoke a balancing dialogue through a careful mirroring of their basic plots.’
‘His extensive fresco cycles display compositional and narrative complexity and combine historical themes with contemporary detail.’
‘Moreover, the narrative structure of short story cycles mirrors the episodic and unchronological method of oral narration.’
‘The planned cycle of seven books is underpinned by the conceit that there should be one book for each day of the week.’
‘About a dozen stories will be performed from the full cycle of 50 plays, retelling the Bible's account of mankind from God's Creation to Judgment Day.’
‘He painted this canvas at the height of his career, while he was working on his celebrated cycle of paintings The Story of Psyche for the Hotel de Soubise in Paris.’
‘The play is part of Wilson's decade-by-decade cycle examining African-American life in the 20th century.’
‘In this section, Davis examines eleven short-story cycles, comparing two or three of them in each of the five chapters.’
‘With Kamban, perhaps for the last time in the cycle of Indian Rama stories, Rama occasionally straddles the nebulous twilight zone between epic hero and infallible deity.’
2.1A series of songs, stories, plays, or poems composed around a particular theme, and usually intended to be performed or read in sequence.
‘Wagner's Ring Cycle’
‘Few established contemporary poets have shown the commitment or innovation displayed by Wearne in writing the long cycles of thematic poems.’
‘The mezzo-soprano distinguished herself in a cycle of spiritual songs by various modern composers.’
‘Reading the text as a short story cycle and not just a collection reveals Lahiri's careful balancing of a range of representations and her intricate use of pattern and motif.’
‘The entire cycle runs at about seven hours, and it's a long haul.’
‘Medieval Lauds featured a weekly cycle of seven canticles beginning on Sunday with the Benedicite.’
‘The last time she attempted an epic cycle of eighteen songs, the result was a horribly uneven album.’
‘This series includes a complete cycle of the symphonies performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra with Leonard Slatkin.’
‘In this sense, she reflects the same concerns as another emblematic mother-daughter short story cycle, Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.’
‘Think of Sibelius, the nationalist composer; or the Kalevala - the epic cycle of musical folktales, first collected in 1835.’
‘He originally thought in terms of a theatrical setting for the whole cycle of fifteen quartets, but that proved too grandiose.’
‘Akhmatova wrote a poem cycle called Cinque which was based on their evenings together.’
3A bicycle or tricycle.
‘The complex procedures required to ride a cycle, or to swim, are only lost with ill health.’
‘The sheer number of people in attendance has reduced the road to barely the width of two cycles.’
‘Sidharth rides a cycle selling tea and coffee in bus and railway stations to make a living.’
‘Ian was riding the cycle, and Amarie was clinging tightly to his back.’
‘She can remember no other girl at that time riding a cycle.’
‘Yuvaraj of standard seven, who came to school walking in the morning, won himself a cycle to ride back home.’
‘Race officials today announced they will be awarding two mountain cycles to volunteers aiding the effort in this year's race.’
2Move in or follow a regularly repeated sequence of events.
‘economies cycle regularly between boom and slump’
‘Most profound were my sharp bursts of emotion, my rapidly cycling feelings that seemed impossible to express.’
‘Be sure to link to this URL, because eventually this entry will cycle off the main page.’
‘Do one or two speed workouts a week, cycling through three different programs.’
‘Ideally, each lesson would cycle repeatedly through the romance, precision and generalization stages.’
‘You can press the up and down arrows repeatedly to cycle through the commands that you've already typed in.’
‘Most athletes follow a rigid periodization scheme that cycles different training protocols every 6-8 weeks or so in the months leading up to a competition.’
‘Using a virus they delivered a genetic mutation to the hearts of the hamsters that corrected a defect in the gene that regulates the way calcium is cycled through the heart.’
‘The frame includes a predefined number of time slots that are cycled through in sequence.’
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French, from late Latin cyclus, from Greek kuklos ‘circle’.