merry-go-round vs whirl

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. 

whirl

noun
  • An act of whirling. 

  • (usually following “give”) A brief experiment or trial. 

  • Something that whirls. 

  • A rapid series of events. 

  • Dizziness or giddiness. 

  • A confused tumult. 

verb
  • To make something or someone whirl. 

  • To have a sensation of spinning or reeling. 

  • To remove or carry quickly with, or as with, a revolving motion; to snatch. 

  • To rotate, revolve, spin or turn rapidly. 

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