Reader question:

Please explain “vicious cycle”, as in this sentence: Extreme weather and climate change may be in a “vicious cycle”.

My comments:

A vicious cycle works this way: One bad thing leads to another, which makes the original situation worse.

And the situation may go on and on, progressively getting worse and worse.

In our example, global climate change is perhaps the cause of extreme weather at the local level, such as prolonged draughts in some places, flooding in others, extreme cold winters here and high temperatures in summer at some place else, and so on, so forth.

Or perhaps it’s the other way around, extreme weather causes climate change.

Whichever it is that starts the ball rolling, the situation works like a cycle, or a loop or wheel that turns round and round without stopping.

And the situation gets worse and worse. That’s what vicious means – bad.

Vicious cycle is a variation, though, from the more formal idiom vicious circle.

Vicious circle is originally a linguistic term, referring to a circular argument, which is a fallacy in logic. Circular argument, as name suggests, is an argument that ends where it formerly begins, going like a circle with the end merging with the beginning.

For example, you must have heard some Christians say that their religion is the best religion because theirs is the religion of God, who is perfect and all mighty and protects nobody but Christians, etc and so forth.

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