cirque
[surk]
- circle; ring.
- a bowl-shaped, steep-walled mountain basin carved by glaciation, often containing a small, round lake.
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Origin of cirque
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for cirque
Contemporary Examples
But no matter where her career has taken her, or how big the Cirque has become, Vial keeps coming back.
Twenty-eight years ago, Veronique Vial was asked to photograph Cirque du Soleil.
When Vial got that first assignment, she was just beginning her photography career, and Cirque du Soleil was only a few years old.
The pride and admiration Vial has for the artists who put on Cirque du Soleil is evident.
Cirque du Soleil obviously sprang to startling success with a variety of shows since its 1987 founding.
Historical Examples
The hour's walk from the village to the Cirque is an event also in the life of the flower-lover.
In the Heart of VosgesMatilda Betham-Edwards
These avalanches were once believed to be the authors of the cirque.
Mount RainierVarious
The cirque, therefore, is at once the product of the glacier and its generator and conserver.
Mount RainierVarious
Is the cirque under these circumstances a result of the schrund or is the schrund a result of the cirque?
The Andes of Southern PeruIsaiah Bowman
A cirque (fig. 8) is shaped something like an office arm-chair.
Modern GeographyMarion I. Newbigin
cirque
- Also called: corrie, cwm a semicircular or crescent-shaped basin with steep sides and a gently sloping floor formed in mountainous regions by the erosive action of a glacier
- archaeol an obsolete term for circle (def. 11)
- poetic a circle, circlet, or ring
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Word Origin
C17: from French, from Latin circus ring, circle, circus
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for cirque
n.
c.1600, "a circus," from French cirque (14c.), from Latin circus (see circus). Cf. Italian and Spanish circo.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
cirque
[sûrk]
- A steep, amphitheatre-shaped hollow occurring at the upper end of a mountain valley, especially one forming the head of a glacier or stream. Cirques are formed by the erosive activity of glaciers and often contain a small lake.
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The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
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