rabbit hole

R

rabbit hole (down the rabbit hole)

Meaning

• mentally go somewhere surreal or strange
• enter a chaotic or problematic situation
• be on a journey or process that is complex, confusing or difficult
• get sucked into a weird situation
• a weird, bizarre, or senseless situation, from which it is difficult to disengage

Example Sentences

1. Peter is having another one of his parties on Friday. Time to go down the rabbit hole again.
2. Research is a rabbit hole for me. I’m not too fond of it.
3. I spent so long reading about the history of the Soviet Union online that I fell down a rabbit hole. So, I’m super tired today.
4. He slid down a rabbit hole last night on the internet. Once he started searching, he couldn’t stop.
5. She just went on Facebook to check her status and fell down a rabbit hole and lost track of time.
6. The novelist Mark Twain tumbles down the rabbit hole of extremism.
7. I’d found myself going down the rabbit hole of strange YouTube, and it was so weird.
8. At the time, much of the world was heading down the Coronavirus rabbit hole, and we were incredulous.
9. We’ve all found ourselves going down the rabbit hole of Netflix true crime documentaries.
10. We have entered a rabbit hole from which we won’t be able to extricate ourselves easily.

Origin

This phrase came about in 1865 in Lewis Carroll’s story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Alice actually falls down a rabbit hole in the story and ends up in Wonderland. Wonderland, if you’ve ever read the book or seen the films, is a strange and surreal place that a lot of people believe was based on a hallucinogenic experience.

Nowadays, we use this phrase more to do with time spent on the internet. People can lose so much time on there that they forget to eat and stay awake half the night.

Animal, Confusion