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musical chairs

musical chairs

3 2.7
A game where players walk around chairs and sit when the music stops
  • noun
  • /ˈmjuːzɪkəl tʃɛrz/
translation icon : sillas musicales
  • Clay won at pin the tail on the donkey and musical chairs.
  • game of musical chairs
  • play musical chairs
  • round of musical chairs

They just stuck around long enough until the game of musical chairs left them alone with the final chair.

Examples

  • At the birthday party, the children laughed and ran around the chairs while playing musical chairs.

  • Let's go downstairs and play musical chairs.

    Sherrybaby (2006)

  • In the wooden community hall along the road, there had been balloons, cakes, musical chairs, pass-the-parcel, and a magic man.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Musical chairs with children.

    Blog text (30)

  • Here we encounter a game of musical chairs, in which the same players with the same nostrums find new sites to go on doing what they have done for forty years.

    Academic text (2001)

  • We all had a great time playing musical chairs during the family reunion.

  • As the music played, the kids hurried to find a seat in the game of musical chairs.

Synonyms

going to Jerusalem
vsmusical chairs
  • Baby Talk
1 7.4

A children's game where players walk around chairs, sit when music stops, and one player leaves each round

is the same game but known by another traditional name

Surface Forms

musical chairs singular
musical chairs plural

Morphology

musical + chairs

Literally the phrase names the children’s game (music + chairs), so there is a visible link between the constituents and the notion of people repeatedly moving/competing for seats. However, the extended, figurative meaning — frequent reshuffling of roles or positions in an organization — depends on cultural/idiomatic knowledge of the game and its typical dynamics, so a B1 learner who only knows the words may not reliably infer the metaphorical sense.

Etymology

Musical chairs comes from a children's game where players walk around chairs while music plays and, when the music stops, everyone rushes to sit because there is always one fewer chair than players.