[Lazarus] Cycle vs. Circle errors

Reinier Olislagers reinierolislagers at gmail.com
Wed Jan 4 08:47:24 CET 2012


On 3-1-2012 22:51, Howard Page-Clark wrote:
> On 03/1/12 5:43, Mattias Gaertner wrote:
> 
>> The term "circle" was translated from German graph theory, but the
>> common words in English graph theory are "cycle" and "cyclic".
> 
> I'm not familiar with graph theory and the possibly specialist technical
> meanings given there to words in common use.
> 
> However, in everyday English neither of the nouns 'cycle' or 'circle'
> has the meaning 'mutual interdependence' except perhaps as a curious
> extension of the metaphor which works poorly if at all.
> 
> Whereas the adjective 'circular' can carry a meaning of 'interdependent'
> or 'dependent on itself'. So a 'circular argument' is flawed in that it
> refers to itself rather than to an independently established
> proposition. But in English you would not normally refer to such a
> circular argument as a 'circle' and expect people (apart perhaps from
> graph theorists?) to appreciate immediately what you meant.
> 
> Dependency (or interdependency) is the more descriptive term, which does
> not rely on a strained metaphor - although 'mutual dependency' is rather
> a mouthful.

Though not a native speaker (which might actually be good as a lot of
users won't be either):

- agreed with Howard: circular would be the adjective that evokes an
image of something leading back to itself.
I would understand cyclic, but only because I already have skimmed graph
theory... not something I'd expect of everyone.

- the noun is more difficult. While mutual dependency or interdependency
would correctly indicate that both units need each other, it doesn't
indicate to me that this is a problem.
Circle or cycle doesn't do it for me either, see above.

I would just try to rephrase messages to use only the adjective.

Regards,
Reinier




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