swings and roundabouts
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
It's the swings and roundabout argument isn't it?
Swings and roundabouts, checks and balances: who'd be a research engineer?
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “swings and roundabouts” mean?
Gains and losses balance each other out Literally: playground equipment
Is “swings and roundabouts” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.