cirque
English · Français · Thesaurus
AI In plain words
Writing a short explanation…
Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.
cirque
- /sɜːk/ UK
- /sɝk/ US
Sounds like circ · Rhymes with -ɜː(ɹ)k
Where it comes from
Borrowed from French cirque (“circular arena; cirque”), from Latin circus (“circle, ring”), from Ancient Greek κίρκος (kírkos, “circle, ring; racecourse, circus”), possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to bend; to turn”). Doublet of circus.
noun cirques
- A Roman circus. Nero exhibited theſe Spectacles in his own Gardens, impiouſly joining to them the Diverſions of the Cirque, and appearing himſelf publicly in the Habit of a Charioteer, ſitting in his Chariot[…].
- A curved depression or natural amphitheatre, especially one in a mountainside at the end of a valley. Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank / Soil to a plash? toads in a poisoned tank, / Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage— / The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
- Something in the shape of a circle or ring. Saturn has supplied to the Greeks and Romans the source of a beautiful personification; they have represented him as Time, […] thus with his scythe is he considered to cut down in endless succession every ripened race of man; and as the serpent is annually renewed by the cast of its skin, so is ever
Translations
Talk about this word "cirque." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/cirque. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026. cirque. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/cirque "cirque." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/cirque.Cite this
@misc{cirque_2026,
title = {cirque},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/cirque},
urldate = {2026-11-06}
}
