round and round

alternative around and around

1. not comparableIn a repeated circular motion.

   The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round. The wheels on the bus go round and round, all through the town.

   traditional, “Wheels on the Bus”

   2 more examples

   The whole economy of this dance consists in turning round and round the room in a certain measured step ; and it is truly astonishing that this continued revolution does not set all their heads swimming like a top ; but I have been positively assured that it only occasions a gentle sensation which is marvellously agreeable.

   1807, Washington Irving, William Irving and James Kirke Paulding, “From the Mill of Pindar Cockloft, Esq. (Notes, by William Wizard, Esq.: Waltz)”, in Salmagundi, number VII

   Eventually, the railway opened on Monday, December 14, 1896, with a universal fare of 1d. collected at the turnstiles, and conditions were immediately chaotic, as many passengers travelled round and round, and refused to leave the cars.

   1955 January, Charles E. Lee, “The Glasgow Underground Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 24

2. figurativelynot comparableFollowing the same course repeatedly in vain.

   Instances were known of people who, being asked to dine at Todgers’s, had travelled round and round for a weary time, with its very chimney–pots in view ; and finding it, at last, impossible of attainment, had gone home again with a gentle melancholy on their spirits, tranquil and uncomplaining.

   1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, “Chapter 9 (“Town and Todgers’s”)”, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC