rabbit hole

noun

: a complexly bizarre or difficult state or situation conceived of as a hole into which one falls or descends

I wanted to show this woman descending into the rabbit hole: this loss of self, becoming a servant to her job and to the work.

—Jessica Chastain

especially : one in which the pursuit of something (such as an answer or solution) leads to other questions, problems, or pursuits

While trying to find the picture again on Google, I fell down the Cosmo rabbit hole, scrolling through a gallery of swimwear, then through "How to Be Sexier-Instantly" and then through all 23 slides of "Sexy Ideas for Long Hair."

—Edith Zimmerman

Because it is so early on in this work it is easy to say that we are either at the edge of a remarkable new and useful science or that we are careering down an environmental rabbit hole.

—Jack Hitt

In the season-two premiere of HBO's Westworld, viewers were again tossed down a rabbit hole filled with theories, where one open door leads to many more closed ones.

—Josh Wigler and Zoe Haylock

Synonyms

• bind
• box
• catch-22
• corner
• dilemma
• fix
• hole
• impasse
• jackpot [chiefly West]
• jam
• mire
• pickle
• predicament
• quagmire
• rattrap
• spot
• sticky wicket
• swamp

Examples of rabbit hole in a Sentence

shoreline residents are finding themselves helplessly falling down a rabbit hole in their Sisyphean efforts to halt beach erosion

Recent Examples on the Web

Set rules for yourself such as reading or watching the news for 10 minutes in the morning or evening, but don’t go down the clicking rabbit hole of checking the poll predictions every hour of the day. Engage in calming activities. —Bryan Robinson, Forbes, 1 Nov. 2024

For those who want to do it, going down the rabbit hole of polls can be a choose-your-own-adventure tale of self-assurance, self-torture, and deep confusion. —Philip Elliott, TIME, 1 Nov. 2024

And yet the one that likely lingers the most in nightmares is again the middle of the mini-series, a stunning piece of editing work that jumps back and forth in time, sending the viewer deeper down the haunted rabbit hole of Bly Manor. —Brian Tallerico, Vulture, 29 Oct. 2024

To be a fan is usually to be an obsessive, with the rabbit hole opening, as many now do, on social media, which centers on the imaginative life of the founder himself. —Nathan Heller, Vogue, 17 Oct. 2024

Word History

Etymology

from the rabbit hole that Alice enters in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

First Known Use

1938, in the meaning defined above