See hamster wheel in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
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"glosses": [
"A circular cage for a hamster or other small rodent, which rotates vertically as the animal runs at its base."
],
"id": "en-hamster_wheel-en-noun-I9Uzy47L",
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"circular",
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"_dis1": "88 12",
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"word": "squirrel cage"
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"_dis1": "92 8 0",
"tags": [
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"word": "hamster-wheel"
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"examples": [
{
"ref": "2002 June 28, Michiko Kakutani, “Books of the Times”, in New York Times, retrieved 2008-09-23:",
"text": "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.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2020 May 6, Prof. Andrew McNaughton, “Time to challenge some sacred philosophies of recent years”, in Rail, page 32:",
"text": "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.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A monotonous, repetitive, unfulfilling activity, especially one in which no progress is achieved."
],
"id": "en-hamster_wheel-en-noun-rkNOjQ7h",
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"monotonous",
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"repetitive",
"repetitive"
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"unfulfilling",
"unfulfilling"
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"progress",
"progress"
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"(figuratively, by extension) A monotonous, repetitive, unfulfilling activity, especially one in which no progress is achieved."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"_dis1": "7 93",
"sense": "a monotonous, repetitive, unfulfilling activity",
"word": "rat race"
}
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"broadly",
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"wikipedia": [
"hamster wheel"
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"word": "hamster wheel"
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"form": "hamster wheeled",
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"form": "hamster wheeled",
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"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
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"examples": [
{
"ref": "2015, Patti Grayson, Ghost Most Foul, page 111:",
"text": "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.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2019, Mary Hughes, M. J. Chase, Chicago's Chosen:",
"text": "But my brain was hamster-wheeling on that one hopefully-not-true-but-probably-was fact.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To cycle fruitlessly."
],
"id": "en-hamster_wheel-en-verb-~EZi7BW2",
"links": [
[
"cycle",
"cycle"
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[
"fruitlessly",
"fruitlessly"
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"raw_glosses": [
"(intransitive, informal, idiomatic) To cycle fruitlessly."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "hamsterization"
},
{
"word": "rationalization hamster"
}
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"word": "hamster wheel"
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"senses": [
{
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"A circular cage for a hamster or other small rodent, which rotates vertically as the animal runs at its base."
],
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"circular",
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{
"ref": "2002 June 28, Michiko Kakutani, “Books of the Times”, in New York Times, retrieved 2008-09-23:",
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"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2020 May 6, Prof. Andrew McNaughton, “Time to challenge some sacred philosophies of recent years”, in Rail, page 32:",
"text": "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.",
"type": "quote"
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],
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"A monotonous, repetitive, unfulfilling activity, especially one in which no progress is achieved."
],
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"(figuratively, by extension) A monotonous, repetitive, unfulfilling activity, especially one in which no progress is achieved."
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]
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],
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"sense": "rotating cage",
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},
{
"sense": "a monotonous, repetitive, unfulfilling activity",
"word": "rat race"
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{
"tags": [
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"word": "hamster-wheel"
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"forms": [
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{
"form": "hamster wheeling",
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"form": "hamster wheeled",
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],
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"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"related": [
{
"word": "hamsterization"
},
{
"word": "rationalization hamster"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English idioms",
"English informal terms",
"English intransitive verbs",
"English terms with quotations",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2015, Patti Grayson, Ghost Most Foul, page 111:",
"text": "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.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2019, Mary Hughes, M. J. Chase, Chicago's Chosen:",
"text": "But my brain was hamster-wheeling on that one hopefully-not-true-but-probably-was fact.",
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"To cycle fruitlessly."
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"(intransitive, informal, idiomatic) To cycle fruitlessly."
],
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"word": "hamster wheel"
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Download raw JSONL data for hamster wheel meaning in English (3.9kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-01 using wiktextract (eaedd02 and 8fbd9e8). 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.
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