"rat's nest" meaning in English

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "rat's nests",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "rat's nest (plural rat's nests)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "hornets' nest"
    },
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "mare's nest"
    },
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "rat king"
    },
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "spaghetti code"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
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      "categories": [
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with collocations",
          "parents": [
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          "source": "w"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "rat's nest of a wiring harness",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1990 May 22, Bernard Holland, “Opera: A 17th-Century Rarity, Cesti's 'Dori'”, in New York Times, retrieved 2017-03-02",
          "text": "To make this mid-17th-century rat's nest of love affairs and sexual confusions intelligible for late-20th-century audiences is a job in itself.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2003 November 1, Charles Arthur, “This is the sound of the future”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 2017-03-02",
          "text": "That has been held up by the need to negotiate the distribution rights for each country with the labels and artists—a rat's nest of contracts.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2015 August 26, “Editorial: Why can't college athletes unionize?”, in Los Angeles Times, retrieved 2017-03-02",
          "text": "Faced with that rat's nest of legal and jurisdictional issues, the NLRB threw the Northwestern players' labor rights under the team bus.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something that is excessively complicated, entangled, or disorderly."
      ],
      "id": "en-rat's_nest-en-noun-R7Z-7gWU",
      "links": [
        [
          "complicated",
          "complicated"
        ],
        [
          "entangled",
          "entangled"
        ],
        [
          "disorderly",
          "disorderly"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Something that is excessively complicated, entangled, or disorderly."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
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          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Computing",
          "orig": "en:Computing",
          "parents": [
            "Technology",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
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          "source": "w"
        },
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          "_dis": "25 75",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2002 January 14, Jim Turley, “Embedded Processors, Part Two”, in PC Magazine, retrieved 2017-03-02",
          "text": "Many CPU silicon designers in the 1990s complained bitterly about the rat's nest in the center of SPARC chips.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008 July 21, Larry Dignan, “Amazon's S3 outage: Is the cloud too complicated?”, in ZDNet, retrieved 2017-03-02",
          "text": "And cloud computing relies on millions of connections and services. In other words, it's a troubleshooting nightmare when the cloud goes bust. . . . In other words, the cloud will likely become more of a rat's nest.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016 July 2, veryatlantic, \"Saturday, July 2, 2016: Addendum,\" Tales From The Trailer Court™ (retrieved 2 March 2017)",
          "text": "Think of libraries as the way the sub-idiots who like C code hide all the rat's-nest programming they don't want you to see."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A software or hardware system whose design lacks organized structure, making it difficult to understand and maintain."
      ],
      "id": "en-rat's_nest-en-noun-c1E8gQzi",
      "links": [
        [
          "computing",
          "computing#Noun"
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        [
          "hyphenate",
          "hyphenate"
        ],
        [
          "attributive",
          "attributive"
        ],
        [
          "software",
          "software"
        ],
        [
          "hardware",
          "hardware"
        ],
        [
          "organize",
          "organize"
        ],
        [
          "structure",
          "structure"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "often hyphenated when used attributively",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, computing, often hyphenated when used attributively) A software or hardware system whose design lacks organized structure, making it difficult to understand and maintain."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "computing",
        "engineering",
        "mathematics",
        "natural-sciences",
        "physical-sciences",
        "sciences"
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      "audio": "En-au-rat's nest.ogg",
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/En-au-rat%27s_nest.ogg",
      "tags": [
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      "text": "Audio (AU)"
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  "word": "rat's nest"
}

{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
    "English terms with audio links"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "rat's nests",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "rat's nest (plural rat's nests)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "hornets' nest"
    },
    {
      "word": "mare's nest"
    },
    {
      "word": "rat king"
    },
    {
      "word": "spaghetti code"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
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        "English idioms",
        "English terms with collocations",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "rat's nest of a wiring harness",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1990 May 22, Bernard Holland, “Opera: A 17th-Century Rarity, Cesti's 'Dori'”, in New York Times, retrieved 2017-03-02",
          "text": "To make this mid-17th-century rat's nest of love affairs and sexual confusions intelligible for late-20th-century audiences is a job in itself.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2003 November 1, Charles Arthur, “This is the sound of the future”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 2017-03-02",
          "text": "That has been held up by the need to negotiate the distribution rights for each country with the labels and artists—a rat's nest of contracts.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2015 August 26, “Editorial: Why can't college athletes unionize?”, in Los Angeles Times, retrieved 2017-03-02",
          "text": "Faced with that rat's nest of legal and jurisdictional issues, the NLRB threw the Northwestern players' labor rights under the team bus.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something that is excessively complicated, entangled, or disorderly."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "complicated",
          "complicated"
        ],
        [
          "entangled",
          "entangled"
        ],
        [
          "disorderly",
          "disorderly"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Something that is excessively complicated, entangled, or disorderly."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English idioms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:Computing"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2002 January 14, Jim Turley, “Embedded Processors, Part Two”, in PC Magazine, retrieved 2017-03-02",
          "text": "Many CPU silicon designers in the 1990s complained bitterly about the rat's nest in the center of SPARC chips.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008 July 21, Larry Dignan, “Amazon's S3 outage: Is the cloud too complicated?”, in ZDNet, retrieved 2017-03-02",
          "text": "And cloud computing relies on millions of connections and services. In other words, it's a troubleshooting nightmare when the cloud goes bust. . . . In other words, the cloud will likely become more of a rat's nest.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016 July 2, veryatlantic, \"Saturday, July 2, 2016: Addendum,\" Tales From The Trailer Court™ (retrieved 2 March 2017)",
          "text": "Think of libraries as the way the sub-idiots who like C code hide all the rat's-nest programming they don't want you to see."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A software or hardware system whose design lacks organized structure, making it difficult to understand and maintain."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "computing",
          "computing#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "hyphenate",
          "hyphenate"
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          "attributive",
          "attributive"
        ],
        [
          "software",
          "software"
        ],
        [
          "hardware",
          "hardware"
        ],
        [
          "organize",
          "organize"
        ],
        [
          "structure",
          "structure"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "often hyphenated when used attributively",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, computing, often hyphenated when used attributively) A software or hardware system whose design lacks organized structure, making it difficult to understand and maintain."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "computing",
        "engineering",
        "mathematics",
        "natural-sciences",
        "physical-sciences",
        "sciences"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
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      "audio": "En-au-rat's nest.ogg",
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      "tags": [
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  "word": "rat's nest"
}