Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A public entertainment consisting typically of a variety of performances by acrobats, clowns, and trained animals.
  • noun A traveling company that performs such entertainments.
  • noun A circular arena, surrounded by tiers of seats and often covered by a tent, in which such shows are performed.
  • noun A roofless oval enclosure surrounded by tiers of seats that was used in antiquity for public spectacles.
  • noun Chiefly British An open circular place where several streets intersect.
  • noun Informal Something suggestive of a circus, as in frenetic activity or noisy disorder.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In Roman antiquity, a large, oblong, roofless inclosure, used especially for horse- and chariot-races.
  • noun In modern times, a place of amusement where feats of horsemanship and acrobatic displays form the principal entertainment; the company of performers in such a place, with their equipage; the entertainment given.
  • noun In England, the space formed at the intersection of two streets by making the buildings at the angles concave, so as to give the intervening space the form of a circle: as, Oxford Circus, Regent Circus, in London.
  • noun An inclosed space of any kind; a circuit.
  • noun [capitalized] In ornithology, a genus of diurnal birds of prey, the harriers, typical of the subfamily Circinæ (which see)

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Roman Antiq.) A level oblong space surrounded on three sides by seats of wood, earth, or stone, rising in tiers one above another, and divided lengthwise through the middle by a barrier around which the track or course was laid out. It was used for chariot races, games, and public shows.
  • noun A circular inclosure for the exhibition of feats of horsemanship, acrobatic displays, etc. Also, the company of performers, with their equipage.
  • noun rare Circuit; space; inclosure.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A traveling company of performers that may include acrobats, clowns, trained animals, and other novelty acts, that gives shows usually in a circular tent.
  • noun A round open space in a town or city where multiple streets meet.
  • noun historical In the ancient Roman Empire, a building for chariot racing.
  • noun military, World War II A code name for bomber attacks with fighter escorts in the day time. The attacks were against short-range targets with the intention of occupying enemy fighters and keeping their fighter units in the area concerned.
  • noun obsolete Circuit; space; enclosure.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an arena consisting of an oval or circular area enclosed by tiers of seats and usually covered by a tent
  • noun a genus of haws comprising the harriers
  • noun a travelling company of entertainers; including trained animals
  • noun a frenetic disorganized (and often comic) disturbance suggestive of a large public entertainment
  • noun (antiquity) an open-air stadium for chariot races and gladiatorial games
  • noun a performance given by a traveling company of acrobats, clowns, and trained animals

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, round arena, from Latin, circus, circle; see circle.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin circus ("ring, circle"), from Proto-Indo-European *sker, *ker (“to turn, to bend”) .

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Examples

  • A surefire sign that the circus is almost over: they send in the clowns, and McConnell is a clown extraordinaire.

    McConnell: Reid bill 'the wrong direction to go' on reform 2009

  • Easily lost in this circus is the careful work that members of Congress do in holding hearings, passing legislation, and taking care of problems brought to their attention by constituents and the press.

    Public misperceptions of Congress Steven E. Levingston 2010

  • Then that blends with what I call circus, which a modern critic would call an amusement-park ride, which is, you know, the gladiators, or horse races, or football teams, or things like that, which are exciting and are emotional.

    Q&A: George Lucas on Indiana Jones 2008

  • Now he's dead, and the memorial service circus is over, let him RIP.

    Pelosi: House won't take up Michael Jackson resolution 2009

  • Yet computers have been crowned with a halo of exaggerated glamor, and the TV election-predicting circus is a classic example.

    Boing Boing 2009

  • The circus is a magnet for runaway mavericks and outcasts, and one early subplot involves a potential bomb threat generated by one of the more aberrant workmen.

    Roush Review: Circus Isn't Just Clowning Around 2010

  • "Circus" has no difficulty finding all the usual, romantically enthralling ideals contained within circus life, which unfortunately causes a lot of the series to feel predictable.

    PBS documentary 'Circus' is more juggling act than one-ring show Hank Stuever 2010

  • I am most definitely not an animal rights person, but training animals to perform in a circus is cruelty.

    Bears Don't Play Hockey 2009

  • This intimate, old-fashioned, one-ring circus is based in Manhattan and was started by two American jugglers in the mid-1970s.

    PBS documentary 'Circus' is more juggling act than one-ring show Hank Stuever 2010

  • Oh, and a trip to the Moscow state circus is not an adequate substitute for the opera or ballet visit also promised in the tour literature - but we shall draw a veil over some of the turns there, which if nothing else provided the UK visitors with a culture shock.

    Current Affairs Maxine 2009

Comments

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  • circular arenas for performances

    June 19, 2007