merry-go-round vs progression

merry-go-round

noun
  • A meaningless cycle; a bustle of activity that gets nowhere 

  • A piece of playground equipment consisting of a circular platform that is made to revolve by pushing while users stand on it. 

  • A series of singles and doubles that allow the batting team to score while still having runners on base who can be driven in by the next batter. 

  • A carousel; a pleasure ride, typically found at fairs and amusement parks, consisting of a slowly revolving circular platform on which various seats are fixed, frequently shaped like horses or other animals. 

  • A freight train of hopper wagons which loads and unloads its cargo while moving, a balloon loop being provided at power stations. 

  • A cooperative scheme in which members regularly contribute money to a pool, and the collected money is then paid out to one of the members, repeating so that every member has eventually received the collected money. 

progression

noun
  • The act of moving from one thing to another. 

  • A sequence obtained by adding or multiplying each term by a constant. 

  • chord progression 

  • The act of moving forward or proceeding in a course; motion onward. 

  • Development, increase, evolution. 

  • The making an exercise more exerting by manipulating the details of its performance like loaded weight, range of motion, angle, speed. 

How often have the words merry-go-round and progression occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )