"talk in circles" meaning in English

See talk in circles in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-talk in circles.ogg [Australia] Forms: talks in circles [present, singular, third-person], talking in circles [participle, present], talked in circles [participle, past], talked in circles [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*|head=talk in circles}} talk in circles (third-person singular simple present talks in circles, present participle talking in circles, simple past and past participle talked in circles)
  1. (idiomatic) To argue a point by repetition of the same theme, sometimes by using different words, but without making any progress. Tags: idiomatic Categories (topical): Talking Synonyms: speak in circles Related terms: circular argument, go round in circles

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for talk in circles meaning in English (2.2kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "talks in circles",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "talking in circles",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "talked in circles",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "talked in circles",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*",
        "head": "talk in circles"
      },
      "expansion": "talk in circles (third-person singular simple present talks in circles, present participle talking in circles, simple past and past participle talked in circles)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Talking",
          "orig": "en:Talking",
          "parents": [
            "Human behaviour",
            "Language",
            "Human",
            "Communication",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To argue a point by repetition of the same theme, sometimes by using different words, but without making any progress."
      ],
      "id": "en-talk_in_circles-en-verb-qu90WLsb",
      "links": [
        [
          "argue",
          "argue"
        ],
        [
          "repetition",
          "repetition"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To argue a point by repetition of the same theme, sometimes by using different words, but without making any progress."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "circular argument"
        },
        {
          "word": "go round in circles"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "speak in circles"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-talk in circles.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/50/En-au-talk_in_circles.ogg/En-au-talk_in_circles.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/En-au-talk_in_circles.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "talk in circles"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "talks in circles",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "talking in circles",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "talked in circles",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "talked in circles",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*",
        "head": "talk in circles"
      },
      "expansion": "talk in circles (third-person singular simple present talks in circles, present participle talking in circles, simple past and past participle talked in circles)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "circular argument"
    },
    {
      "word": "go round in circles"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English verbs",
        "en:Talking"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To argue a point by repetition of the same theme, sometimes by using different words, but without making any progress."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "argue",
          "argue"
        ],
        [
          "repetition",
          "repetition"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To argue a point by repetition of the same theme, sometimes by using different words, but without making any progress."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-talk in circles.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/50/En-au-talk_in_circles.ogg/En-au-talk_in_circles.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/En-au-talk_in_circles.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "speak in circles"
    }
  ],
  "word": "talk in circles"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.