hamster wheel
English
[edit]
Alternative forms
[edit]- hamster-wheel (verb)
Noun
[edit]hamster wheel (plural hamster wheels)
- A circular cage for a hamster or other small rodent, which rotates vertically as the animal runs at its base.
- (figuratively, by extension) A monotonous, repetitive, unfulfilling activity, especially one in which no progress is achieved.
- 2002 June 28, Michiko Kakutani, “Books of the Times”, in New York Times, retrieved 23 September 2008:
- The overall mood of this volume is one of melancholy and loss, weary resignation to one's lot—trudging round and round on the rusty hamster wheel of life.
- 2020 May 6, Prof. Andrew McNaughton, “Time to challenge some sacred philosophies of recent years”, in Rail, page 32:
- Before the current pandemic, the rail industry appeared to be trapped on an ever-accelerating hamster wheel, trying to keep up with customer demand and political expectation on an essentially historic system itself exposed to greater impacts of climate change.
Synonyms
[edit]- (rotating cage): squirrel cage
- (a monotonous, repetitive, unfulfilling activity): rat race
Verb
[edit]hamster wheel (third-person singular simple present hamster wheels, present participle hamster wheeling, simple past and past participle hamster wheeled)
- (intransitive, informal, idiomatic) To cycle fruitlessly.
- 2015, Patti Grayson, Ghost Most Foul, page 111:
- I was shocked that I'd forgotten about the game that morning, but my mind had hamster-wheeled around for hours during the night, long after I should have been asleep.
- 2019, Mary Hughes, M. J. Chase, Chicago's Chosen:
- But my brain was hamster-wheeling on that one hopefully-not-true-but-probably-was fact.