circus

«circus» in Mova's school dictionary: a travelling show, often in a big tent, with acrobats… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a circus, circuses)

meaning for a pupil

1) A circus is a travelling show, often in a big tent, with acrobats, clowns, jugglers and sometimes trained animals. tree →

2) (UK) A circus is a round open place where several streets meet, as in Piccadilly Circus in London. tree →

3) (informal) A circus is a noisy, messy or silly situation: «The kitchen was a circus this morning.» tree →

sense in the lessons

In stories the circus brings excitement and colourful characters; maths problems count tickets, seats and acts. In everyday speech, calling something a circus means it is chaotic. Phrases: «go to the circus», «circus tent», «circus act», «a media circus».

examples

• We went to the circus and saw a juggler. tree →
• The circus tent holds 400 people; 275 seats are full — how many are empty? tree →
• The clown fell over and everyone laughed. tree →
• Piccadilly Circus is busy with traffic. tree →
• With five kids and a dog, breakfast is a circus. tree →
• The circus came to town for a week. tree →
• I’d much rather go back to Kansas with you and be in a circus again.” tree →

note

Plural: circuses. Countable. From Latin for «circle», so a road circus is round. Many circuses today have no animals.

In the corpora

• For fun, crowds cheered chariot teams at the Circus Maximus, like football fans, and watched gladiators in the Colosseum.
• The Circus Maximus held perhaps 150,000 fans, who cheered for chariot teams called the Reds, Whites, Greens and Blues.
• Some jump from one small step to a disaster: blue hair, then tattoos, then the circus.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «circus» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.