musical chairs (uncountable)

1. (games) A children's game in which players circle a group of chairs. There is one chair fewer than the number of players. When someone who is not watching stops playing music, everybody sits down, and the player left without a chair is eliminated.
2. (figuratively) Any activity which results in repeated, pointless shuffling of people or objects.
   • 2012, Zadie Smith, NW, London: Penguin Books, published 2013, →ISBN, page 23 ↗:

     They were married though they needn't have married, and though both had sworn they never would be. It is hard to explain—in that game of musical chairs—why they should have stopped, finally, at each other.

• French: chaises musicales
• German: Reise nach Jerusalem
• Italian: gioco della sedia
• Portuguese: dança das cadeiras
• Russian: музыкальные стулья
• Spanish: juego de las sillas, sillita musical, sillas musicales, (Argentina) baile de las sillas