Circulate
verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 to move in circles or through a circuit intransitive
- 2 cause to become widely known wordnet
- 3 to cause (a person or thing) to move in circles or through a circuit transitive
- 4 become widely known and passed on wordnet
- 5 to move from person to person, as at a party
"In both the 2005 and 2013 papal elections there were whispers circulating that back in 1976 Francis had failed to help the two priests in their hour of need."
Show 7 more definitions
- 6 move around freely from person to person or from place to place wordnet
- 7 to spread or disseminate
"to circulate money or gossip"
- 8 move through a space, circuit or system, returning to the starting point wordnet
- 9 to become widely known
- 10 cause to move in a circuit or system wordnet
- 11 Of decimals: to repeat.
- 12 cause to be distributed wordnet
Example
More examples"I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."
Etymology
Borrowed from Late Latin circulātus, perfect passive participle of Late Latin circulō (“to make circular, encircle”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)), a later collateral form of circulor (“form a circle (of men) around oneself”), from circulus (“a circle”). See also Middle English circulat(e) (“(alchemy) changed by continuous distillation in a closed vessel”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.