go around in circles

Example: “We've been going around in circles about the color of the walls for an hour.”

Origin: The core image — motion with real effort but no actual progress — is ancient enough that Plato uses almost exactly this figure in Charmides, describing a circular, going-nowhere argument: "you drag me round and round in a circle." The specific modern English idiom is generally dated to the first half of the 20th century, appearing for instance in Patricia Wentworth's 1942 novel Pursuit of a Parcel. Several literal images have been proposed for what inspired it directly, none clearly confirmed over the others: a lost traveler unconsciously walking in circles rather than reaching any destination, an animal chasing its own tail, or a horse being worked in a circular training ring. All share the same underlying picture of movement that consumes energy without ever closing the distance to an actual goal.