merry-go-round vs sequence

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. 

sequence

noun
  • The state of being sequent or following; order of succession. 

  • An ordered list of objects, typically indexed with natural numbers. 

  • A series of shots that depict a single action or style in a film, television show etc. 

  • A series of musical phrases where a theme or melody is repeated, with some change each time, such as in pitch or length (example: opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony). 

  • A musical composition used in some Catholic Masses between the readings. The most famous sequence is the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) formerly used in funeral services. 

  • A set of things next to each other in a set order; a series 

  • A meld consisting of three or more cards of successive ranks in the same suit, such as the four, five and six of hearts. 

verb
  • to determine the order of things, especially of amino acids in a protein, or of bases in a nucleic acid 

  • to produce (music) with a sequencer 

  • to arrange in an order 

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