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circulation

nounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˌsɜː(ɹ).kjʊˈleɪ.ʃən//
  • United States//ˌsɝkjʊˈleɪʃən//

The act of moving in a circle, or in a course which brings the moving body to the place where its motion began.

noun

  1. 1

    The act of moving in a circle, or in a course which brings the moving body to the place where its motion began.

  2. 2

    The act of passing from place to place or person to person; free diffusion; transmission.

    For example, by changing the use of existing rooms, removing or replacing unsightly features, clearing obstacles to easy circulation, rearranging direction signs and generally introducing as much order as possible, most outdated station buildings can be made reasonably efficient and attractive.

  3. 3

    Currency; circulating coins; notes, bills, etc., current for coin.

    The new bills will come into circulation next Friday.

  4. 4

    The extent to which anything circulates or is circulated; the measurement of diffusion, especially the number of copies sold of a publication.

    June 1 2016, Karen Roberts in the Evening Express, Aberdeen Journals - The Broad Street Years The reputation and circulation of the paper continued to grow, and the board decided a new custom-built base was required for both the Press and Journal and Evening Express to replace the crumbling, but much loved, Broad Street offices.

    Print circulation across the top 50 US magazines fell 5% year-on-year.

  5. 5

    The movement of the blood in the circulatory system, by which it is brought into close relations with the cells and tissues of the body; (loosely) the circulatory system.

    In the dead state all is apparently without motion. No agent within indicates design, intelligence, or foresight: there is no respiration; no digestion, circulation, or nutrition; […]

  6. 6

    The movement of the sap in the vessels and tissues of plants.

Etymology

From Middle English circulacioun, from Latin circulatio. Morphologically circulate + -ion.

Forms

plural
circulations
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).