Other forms: cycling, cycles, cycled
To cycle is to travel by pedalling a two-wheeled machine. Britain says cycle where America says bike.
The noun means the bicycle itself in slightly formal British English, which is why we have cycle lanes, cycle paths and a cycle shop. There is a completely separate and much commoner noun meaning a repeating sequence, so the water cycle, an economic cycle and a wash cycle all take it. Both come from the same Greek word for a circle, which the wheels make literal.
Proto-Indo-European
*kʷel-
Middle English
cicle
English, today
cycle
From Middle English cicle. From Middle English cicle (“fixed length period of years”), from Latin cyclus, from Ancient Greek κύκλος (“circle”), from Proto-Hellenic kúklos, kʷókʷlos, from Proto-Indo-European kʷékʷlos (“circle, wheel”). a doublet of chakra and chakram and charkha and chukker and cyclus and kike and wheel (see there for more).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA