a. [a. F. cyclique (16th c. in Hatzfeld), or ad. L. cyclic-us, a. Gr. κυκλικός moving in a circle, cyclic, f. κύκλος CYCLE.]
1. Of or pertaining to a cycle or cycles; of the nature of a cycle; revolving or recurring in cycles.
1794. R. J. Sulivan, View Nat., II. 226. The order he [Moses] has given his narrative is … conformable to the cyclic ideas of the people he lived amongst.
1840. Mrs. Browning, Drama of Exile. While all the cyclic heavens about me spun.
1879. Proctor, Pleas. Ways Sc., ii. 31. Cyclic associations between solar and terrestrial phenomena.
b. Belonging to a definite chronological cycle.
1838. Arnold, Hist. Rome, I. xvii. 368, note. Twenty cyclic years, of ten months each.
1850. C. P. Brown (title), Cyclic Tables of Chronology of the history of the Telugu and Kannadi countries (Madras).
c. Characterized by recurrence in cycles.
1885. F. W. Pary, in Lancet, 17 Oct., 706. These cases … have a cyclic character belonging to them, and hence my adoption of the term Cyclic Albuminuria.
1886. Braithwaite’s Retrosp. Med., XCIII. 219. A Physiological cyclic change.
1888. Fagge, Princ. & Pract. Med. (ed. 2), II. 600. ‘Cyclic albuminuria,’ by which is denoted the recurrence of traces of albumen in the urine at more or less regular intervals.
2. Of or belonging to a cycle of mythic and heroic story: see CYCLE sb. 6. Cyclic poet: one of the writers of the ‘Epic cycle.’
a. 1822. Shelley, Def. Poetry, Prose Wks. 1888, II. 20. They are the episodes of that cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of men.
1840. trans. Müller’s Hist. Lit. Greece, vi. 64. This class of [later] epic poets is called the Cyclic, from their constant endeavour to connect their poems with those of Homer, so that the whole should form a great cycle.
1868. Gladstone, Juv. Mundi, i. (1870), 11. The Cyclic Poems, which aimed at completing the circle of events with which they deal.
b. transf. Belonging to the cycle of current Greek tradition which underlies the Synoptic Gospels, as distinguished from what is peculiar to a single Synoptist.
1851. Westcott, Introd. Gospels, iv. (ed. 5), 225. In all the cases of Cyclic quotations parallels occur in the other Synoptic Gospels agreeing (as St. Matthew) with the LXX.
3. Cyclic chorus [Gr. κύκλιος χορός] in Gr. Antiq.: the dithyrambic chorus, which was danced in a ring round the altar of Dionysus.
1846. Worcester, Cyclic … noting a kind of verse or chorus, cyclical. Beck.
4. Bot. Of a flower: Having its parts arranged in whorls.
1875. Bennett & Dyer, trans. Sachs’ Bot., 565. In the great majority of Dicotyledons the parts of the flower are arranged in whorls, or the flowers are cyclic; only in a comparatively small number of families … are all or some of them arranged spirally (acyclic or hemicyclic).
5. Math. Of or pertaining to a circle or cycle.
spec. Cyclic axis (of a cone of the second order): a line through the vertex perpendicular to the circular section of the cone. (1852 Booth.) Cyclic constant: the constant by which a many-valued function is increased after describing a non-evanescible circuit or cycle in a cyclic region. (1881 Maxwell, Electr. & Magn., I. 18.) Cyclic planes (of a cone of the second order): the two planes through one of the axes which are parallel to the circular section of the cone. (1874 Salmon, Analyt. Geom. Three Dim., 194.) Sometimes used of any circular sections. Cyclic quadrilateral: one inscribable in a circle. (1888 Casey, Plane Trigonometry, 184) Cyclic region: a region or domain within which a closed line can be drawn in such a manner that it cannot shrink indefinitely without passing out of the region.
6. Gr. Prosody. Of a dactyl or anapæst: Occupying in scansion only three ‘times’ instead of four; applied to dactyls which interchange, not (as in Hexameters) with spondees, but with trochees.
1844. Beck & Felton, trans. Munk’s Metres, 102. The cyclic anapæsts, so called, are analogous to the irrational dactyls.
1879. L. Campbell, Sophocles, I. Pref. 44. According to a doubtful theory the dactyls in logaoedic verse are each of them equivalent in time to a trochee, much as a triplet may be occasionally introduced in ordinary music without altering the time. Such a foot is called a ‘lyrical’ or ‘cyclic’ dactyl (ποὺς κύκλιος).
