Just wondering if this word merits a home here, I’ve been trying to do research on it: circulus
Honestly I’m not sure that circulus is really an English word: it looks to me rather like the original Latin word that throughout the ages gave birth to “circle”, “circuit”, “circus”, “circular”, “circulation”, “cycle” and so many other legitimate English (and not only English) terms, all of them related in some way to the concept of ‘around’, ‘about’.
Yet the “original” Latin word was anything but original itself: according to Aunt Wiki and confirmed by my venerable Ancient Greek dictionary, it derives from the Greek κίρκος / κύκλος, itself a metathesis of the Homeric Greek κρίκος (krikos), meaning “hoop” or “ring”.
Then if you want to dig deeper in the past you don’t have to look very far: a quite satisfactory etymology of “κύκλος” is right here around the corner 
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Thanks for your quick and thoughtful response!
I found the word in several of Judge Thomas Troward’s works:
The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science (1904) (" … the circulus of molecular vibrations…");
Bible Mystery & Meaning (1905) (" … in the circulus of past memories … ");
The Creative Process in the Individual (1910) (“… as a mere circulus for the repetition of previously received ideas …”);
The Hidden Power (1921) (" … and thus arises a circulus from which there is no escape …").
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Yes, it’s common practice (or bad habit, you choose ) for people who’ve been inflicted a classical education to slip with great nonchalance into their speech or writings words borrowed from their past studies as if they really belonged to the language they’re using.
Jurists, ecclesiastics, professors, scientists… let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
In most cases it isn’t even a matter of showing off one’s culture as much as of professional habit and laziness: those ‘alien’ words belong to the jargon they use daily on the job, and translating them into everyday speech may require an effort they’d rather spare themselves 