See roach motel on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "The meaning \"low-priced motel\" is because such a place might be expected to be infested with roaches. The meaning \"something easy to enter, difficult to leave\" is from American roach-bait brand Roach Motel, advertised with the slogan \"Roaches check in, but they don't check out!\"",
"forms": [
{
"form": "roach motels",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "roach motel (plural roach motels)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "61 37 2",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "60 38 3",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "83 14 3",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A low-priced motel in a state of disrepair."
],
"id": "en-roach_motel-en-noun-UICX-rwd",
"links": [
[
"derogatory",
"derogatory"
],
[
"motel",
"motel"
],
[
"disrepair",
"disrepair"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(derogatory) A low-priced motel in a state of disrepair."
],
"tags": [
"derogatory"
]
},
{
"categories": [],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2010, William H. Inmon, Bonnie O'Neil, Lowell Fryman, Business Metadata: Capturing Enterprise Knowledge, page 141:",
"text": "8.3.1 The Importance of Easy Access: Avoid the “Roach Motel!” In Chapter 6, we discussed what a “roach motel” was. You can get data into a “roach motel”, but you can't easily get it out.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2011, Cory Doctorow, Context, page 102:",
"text": "Don't hope for a better shake from Apple, either. Apple's longstanding love-affair with proprietary formats and lock-ins will very likely make the iPad every inch the roach motel that the Kindle is",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2015, Scot R. Wheeler, Architecting Experience: A Marketing Science and Digital Analytics Handbook, page 186:",
"text": "The “Roach Motel” is a broad category of Dark Pattern that subsumes most types listed on this site. Put simply, a Roach Motel makes it very easy for a user to get into a certain situation, but then makes it hard for them to get out of it when they realize it is undesirable.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2016 June 8, Zoe Kleinman, “Is the web full of nasty tricks?”, in BBC News:",
"text": "Ever signed up for something online and then found it very difficult to unsubscribe? Then you've been to a roach motel - one of many web design tricks employed by some firms to drum up more trade.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2022, Robert A. Schwartz, John Aidan Byrne, Eileen Stempel, 40 Years of Experience with the National Market System (NMS), page 51:",
"text": "CAVOLI: If you do not know, 390 was a specific New York Stock Exchange rule that disallowed member organizations from trading off exchange, as late as 2001. MAHONEY: In the beginning, the NYSE was truly the roach motel.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2022 December 9, Itu Rathore, “Is Amazon employing a deceptive strategy to keep its Prime members subscribed?”, in dazeinfo briefs:",
"text": "The research was conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, and the findings point to one conclusion: “Amazon Prime’s subscription model is a “roach motel,” where getting in is almost effortless, but escape is an ordeal.”",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Something that is easy to enter, but is difficult or costly to leave."
],
"id": "en-roach_motel-en-noun-gUmr4HS0"
},
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English genericized trademarks",
"parents": [
"Genericized trademarks",
"Terms by etymology",
"Trademarks",
"Terms by usage"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A cockroach trap."
],
"id": "en-roach_motel-en-noun-pqmmEDpA",
"links": [
[
"genericized trademark",
"genericized trademark"
],
[
"cockroach",
"cockroach"
]
],
"qualifier": "genericized trademark",
"raw_glosses": [
"(genericized trademark) A cockroach trap."
]
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"Roach Motel",
"roach motel"
],
"word": "roach motel"
}
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"etymology_text": "The meaning \"low-priced motel\" is because such a place might be expected to be infested with roaches. The meaning \"something easy to enter, difficult to leave\" is from American roach-bait brand Roach Motel, advertised with the slogan \"Roaches check in, but they don't check out!\"",
"forms": [
{
"form": "roach motels",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "roach motel (plural roach motels)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English derogatory terms"
],
"glosses": [
"A low-priced motel in a state of disrepair."
],
"links": [
[
"derogatory",
"derogatory"
],
[
"motel",
"motel"
],
[
"disrepair",
"disrepair"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(derogatory) A low-priced motel in a state of disrepair."
],
"tags": [
"derogatory"
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2010, William H. Inmon, Bonnie O'Neil, Lowell Fryman, Business Metadata: Capturing Enterprise Knowledge, page 141:",
"text": "8.3.1 The Importance of Easy Access: Avoid the “Roach Motel!” In Chapter 6, we discussed what a “roach motel” was. You can get data into a “roach motel”, but you can't easily get it out.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2011, Cory Doctorow, Context, page 102:",
"text": "Don't hope for a better shake from Apple, either. Apple's longstanding love-affair with proprietary formats and lock-ins will very likely make the iPad every inch the roach motel that the Kindle is",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2015, Scot R. Wheeler, Architecting Experience: A Marketing Science and Digital Analytics Handbook, page 186:",
"text": "The “Roach Motel” is a broad category of Dark Pattern that subsumes most types listed on this site. Put simply, a Roach Motel makes it very easy for a user to get into a certain situation, but then makes it hard for them to get out of it when they realize it is undesirable.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2016 June 8, Zoe Kleinman, “Is the web full of nasty tricks?”, in BBC News:",
"text": "Ever signed up for something online and then found it very difficult to unsubscribe? Then you've been to a roach motel - one of many web design tricks employed by some firms to drum up more trade.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2022, Robert A. Schwartz, John Aidan Byrne, Eileen Stempel, 40 Years of Experience with the National Market System (NMS), page 51:",
"text": "CAVOLI: If you do not know, 390 was a specific New York Stock Exchange rule that disallowed member organizations from trading off exchange, as late as 2001. MAHONEY: In the beginning, the NYSE was truly the roach motel.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2022 December 9, Itu Rathore, “Is Amazon employing a deceptive strategy to keep its Prime members subscribed?”, in dazeinfo briefs:",
"text": "The research was conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, and the findings point to one conclusion: “Amazon Prime’s subscription model is a “roach motel,” where getting in is almost effortless, but escape is an ordeal.”",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Something that is easy to enter, but is difficult or costly to leave."
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English genericized trademarks"
],
"glosses": [
"A cockroach trap."
],
"links": [
[
"genericized trademark",
"genericized trademark"
],
[
"cockroach",
"cockroach"
]
],
"qualifier": "genericized trademark",
"raw_glosses": [
"(genericized trademark) A cockroach trap."
]
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"Roach Motel",
"roach motel"
],
"word": "roach motel"
}
Download raw JSONL data for roach motel meaning in All languages combined (3.6kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-03-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-21 using wiktextract (7c21d10 and f2e72e5). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.