Carousel vs. Merry-Go-Round

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. This is another Martha.

Hey, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Marthas.

I’m calling from Sacramento this morning. How are you?

Great. How are you doing? How’s Sacramento?

Well, I have a question that has been in my mind for more years than I would care to admit because it dates back to when I was taking French in high school.

And my very wonderful French teacher, Madame Coudert, insisted that there was a difference between a merry-go-round and a carousel, which in French, of course, is carousel.

But she said that a merry-go-round travels counterclockwise, and a carousel travels clockwise.

And I’ve noticed that in this country, it seems to be that if you have a merry-go-round and you want it to sound really fancy, you call it a carousel.

It doesn’t have anything to do with direction.

So is there any truth to this, or is this just a French convention, or what?

Really great question. I want to clear something up first.

Okay?

Okay.

For me, a merry-go-round is only the playground equipment that kids push and then climb aboard so they can spin and get sick.

And for me, the thing with the horses or the animals that go up and down is never called a merry-go-round.

I know that other people don’t have that experience.

Yeah, I sure didn’t.

Use the terms merry-go-round and carousel interchangeably to refer to the giant musical machine with the animals that go up and down.

Right.

For a couple of bucks.

The mirrors, yeah.

Yeah, mirrors and lights and all that.

Right. I know that there is the little thing that goes around in a playground, and that generally is called a merry-go-round.

But the big one with the music and the horses can be called either a merry-go-round or a carousel.

For example, at the boardwalk in Santa Cruz, California, it’s a merry-go-round, and it does travel counterclockwise.

And I think you’re right that carousel, at least to me, sounds more elevated somehow, fancier, bigger.

So your French teacher said that the merry-go-round goes which way?

Goes counterclockwise, and a carousel travels clockwise.

You know, there’s no basis in reality for that.

There’s a geographic difference.

In the United States, they almost always go counterclockwise.

Correct.

And in the U.K., they almost always go clockwise.

In France, they do both.

And actually, most of Europe, they do.

It just depends where they bought it from.

But really, it does, because in Paris, there are at least three carousels that I’ve ridden, and two of them go clockwise and one of them goes counterclockwise.

You remember that?

Yes.

Wow.

I have video.

I have pictures.

Oh, okay.

And they were all called carousels?

Yes.

Carousels.

Yes, exactly.

Carousels.

Yeah, carousels.

And they have the cool ones with the stairs that go up to the part in the middle.

Right.

So there’s no basis in reality that the name somehow is connected to whether or not they go counterclockwise or clockwise.

It’s simply a geographic difference.

-huh.

So perhaps her insistence was based more on her geography as opposed to her French.

Right.

And she may have been under the impression that somehow the merry-go-round was more exclusively related to the United States, that we didn’t ever call them carousels.

Maybe that was part of her.

I don’t know.

There’s a really interesting thing that happens with the merry-go-round and carousel, though, is that there are a lot of disputes about whether or not there’s a difference between the terms.

And the other distinctions that people make is that one, for some reason, has only horses.

Some people say that a carousel is the one with horses.

If it has anything but horses, then it’s not a carousel.

Like, for example, the one at the Bronx Zoo in New York City has bugs.

You can climb aboard a giant grasshopper and ride around in it.

It was awesome. It’s amazing. I loved it.

It’s my favorite one in the world, actually.

And with my son, we’ve probably ridden 15 or 20 carousels here and there.

And some people say the color of lights or whether or not there’s music, all just different stuff like that.

So it sounds as if really the difference is how fancy the owner wants it to be.

If he wants it to sound really, really fancy and tarted up, he calls it a carousel.

If he just wants it to get a lot of people to ride on it with horses up and down, it’s a merry-go-round.

You know, I’ve never heard a carousel called a merry-go-round.

All the ones that I’ve ridden with my wife and son, I’ve never heard it called a merry-go-round.

I’ve never heard a merry-go-round described as tarted up either.

I love this.

Anyway, it’s all…

Who knew there was so much to say about this stuff?

So there’s no distinction between that.

But, you know, there are a lot of other terms for this device, or traditionally there have been.

Some people used to call them whirly gigs.

You ever heard that one?

Yeah, I’ve heard that.

Whirly gigs.

Let’s see.

Now, I’ve heard that for the thing on the playground, whirly gigs.

Oh, you have?

Yeah.

Okay, a whirly-go-round.

Yeah.

Anyway, I hope we’ve helped a little bit, Martha.

Well, Grant, I just invite you to go to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and ride the merry-go-round there.

All right, will do.

I’ll have to add that to my list.

Yeah, we’ll post pictures through the website when we do that.

Whee!

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You know, we probably have opened up a whole new vein of conversation here where the carousel fanatics are about to come out of the woodwork.

We welcome you.

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