🗓️ Idiom: A Vicious Cycle (noun)
💬 Meaning
- A situation where one bad thing causes another bad thing, and the pattern keeps repeating.
- A continuous loop of negative actions or results that make the problem worse.
🧠 Example Sentences
- Poor communication created a vicious cycle between the departments, with each misunderstanding leading to even more conflict.
- When customer complaints increased, the team felt stressed, which led to mistakes, creating a vicious cycle of frustration.
- Two colleagues entered a vicious cycle of blaming each other instead of solving the real issue.
🏛️ Origin
The phrase comes from the Latin term circulus vitiosus, used in philosophy and logic. It described a faulty argument that loops back on itself. The meaning expanded to describe any real-life situation where problems repeat and feed into each other, making the situation worse.
📝 Practice Exercises
1. Fill in the blank:
The constant arguing put the team in __________ that made every meeting more stressful.
Answer
a vicious cycle
2. Choose the correct answer:
A “vicious cycle” is a pattern where:
a) Things improve naturally
b) One problem leads to another problem
c) People work together smoothly
Answer
b) One problem leads to another problem
3. Change the sentence using “a vicious cycle”:
“Every complaint led to more stress, and more stress caused even more mistakes.”
Answer
It became a vicious cycle, with complaints causing stress, and stress causing more mistakes.
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