shuffle the cards

Verb

shuffle the cards (third-person singular simple present shuffles the cards, present participle shuffling the cards, simple past and past participle shuffled the cards)

1. (figuratively) To reorganize or restructure an organization or situation.
   • Things often look as though they have radically changed; whereas they have just taken on opposite appearances, as they so often do, to shuffle the cards and set people on a side track.2005, Julia Pascal, Women in Theatre, page 103
   • Lesbian bohemians whose economic status was less secure and whose lives were less would-be-conventional, like surrealists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, were sometimes less clearly inverted or more inclined to play with gender ('shuffle the cards') in proto-queer ways.2015, Peter Drucker, Warped: Gay Normality and Queer Anti-Capitalism, page 123
2. (figuratively) To randomize an ongoing process.
   • Progress in one quarter only implies retrogression in another; human endeavor with its victories and its failures means no more than that the Absolute is shuffling the cards.1902, William Munk, The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, page 463
   • This is the same as shuffling the cards and adding diversity to the system, that otherwise would have been excessively influenced by the choice of the initial population.2007, Luca Iandoli, Giuseppe Zollo, Organizational Cognition and Learning
3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see shuffle, cards.
   • Shuffle the cards and deal out four cards to each player.2000, Kirsten Larsen, Princesses Pull-Out Posters and Game Cards, page 31