Other Meanings
"Playing musical chairs" is also a metaphorical way of describing any activity where items or people are repeatedly and usually pointlessly shuffled among various locations. It can also refer to a condition where people have to expend time searching for a resource, such as having to travel from gasoline station to gasoline station when there is a shortage. It is also used to refer to political situations where one leader replaces another, only to be rapidly replaced in turn due to the instability of the governing system (see cabinet shuffle).
"Musical chairs" is or was formerly also known as "Going to Jerusalem". Laura Lee Hope describes it under that name in chapter XIII of The Bobbsey Twins at School, as does John P. Marquand in chapter XXXI of Wickford Point.
In the musical Evita, during the song "the art of the possible", Juan Perón and a group of other military officers play a game of musical chairs which Perón wins, symbolizing his rise to power.
In mathematics, the principle that says that if the number of players is one more than the number of chairs, then one player is left standing, is the pigeonhole principle.
Read more about this topic: Musical Chairs
Famous quotes containing the word meanings:
“Man cannot bury his meanings so deep in his book, but time and like-minded men will find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had he? What secret can he conceal from the eyes of Bacon? of Montaigne? of Kant? Therefore, Aristotle said of his works, “They are published and not published.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Well, “slithy” means “lithe and slimy.” “Lithe” is the same as “active.” You see, it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)