See whack-a-mole in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for whack-a-mole meaning in English (6.9kB)
{
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{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "whack",
"3": "a",
"4": "mole",
"t3": "small, burrowing, insect-eating mammal of the family Talpidae"
},
"expansion": "whack + a + mole (“small, burrowing, insect-eating mammal of the family Talpidae”)",
"name": "compound"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "coined"
},
"expansion": "coined",
"name": "glossary"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "ja",
"2": "モグラ退治",
"lit": "Mole Extermination",
"tr": "Mogura Taiji"
},
"expansion": "モグラ退治 (Mogura Taiji, literally “Mole Extermination”)",
"name": "m"
}
],
"etymology_text": "From whack + a + mole (“small, burrowing, insect-eating mammal of the family Talpidae”), from the arcade game Whac-A-Mole which involves quickly and repeatedly hitting the heads of mechanical moles with a mallet as they pop up from holes. The name of the arcade game was coined in 1977 when it was first sold in the United States; the original game released in Japan in 1975 was called モグラ退治 (Mogura Taiji, literally “Mole Extermination”).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "whack-a-moles",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
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"head_templates": [
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"args": {
"1": "~"
},
"expansion": "whack-a-mole (countable and uncountable, plural whack-a-moles)",
"name": "en-noun"
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"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
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"kind": "other",
"name": "American English",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
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],
"examples": [
{
"text": "Trying to get rid of spam e-mails is like whack-a-mole: as soon as you delete one, another appears.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "2007 November, Gil Schwartz, “The Office Politic: Escape from the Job Monster”, in David Zinczenko, editor, Men’s Health, volume 22, number 9, Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 122, column 1",
"text": "Identify a challenge. Put your shoulder into it. Make it go away. Just as it disappears, whoops, here comes another one. It's like a game of whack-a-mole. Trust me, you'll never run out of quarters.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2014 November 17, Roger Cohen, “The horror! The horror! The trauma of ISIS [print version: International New York Times, 18 November 2014, page 9]”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2021-06-10",
"text": "What is unbearable, in fact, is the feeling, 13 years after 9/11, that America has been chasing its tail; that, in some whack-a-mole horror show, the quashing of a jihadi enclave here only spurs the sprouting of another there; that the ideology of Al Qaeda is still reverberating through a blocked Arab world whose Sunni-Shia balance (insofar as that went) was upended by the American invasion of Iraq.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2020 August 29, Rebecca Nicholson, “Tom Cruise: Another groundbreaking role for cinema’s cheerleader”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2021-10-16",
"text": "Some flew across the United States; some were planning to fly into London from Europe, though, like many of us, they could only try their best to keep up with the government’s air corridor whack-a-mole.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2021 March 17, Drachinifel, 13:14 from the start, in Guadalcanal Campaign - The Big Night Battle: Night 2 (IJN 3(?) : 3 USN), archived from the original on 2022-07-14",
"text": "With power being redistributed automatically and surging through other circuits as the system tried to reroute electricity to keep things operational, various parts of the ship began to flicker internally as more and more breakers began to trip and were reset, only to trip again. Then, one of the engineers, tired of playing whack-a-mole, tied one of the more important breakers down so that it physically couldn't trip. This turned out to be a mistake, and a cascade overload crippled the ship's radar, radios, and power training on most of her guns. With no way of communicating with Washington, South Dakota simply held course whilst men in the switchboard room tried their best to reset the ship's entire electrical grid.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"The practice of trying to stop problems, etc., that repeatedly occur in an apparently random manner; also, the act of dealing with such matters in a piecemeal manner without achieving a complete solution."
],
"id": "en-whack-a-mole-en-noun-U0lwLJT5",
"links": [
[
"practice",
"practice#Noun"
],
[
"trying",
"try#Verb"
],
[
"stop",
"stop#Verb"
],
[
"problems",
"problem#Noun"
],
[
"repeatedly",
"repeatedly"
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[
"occur",
"occur"
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[
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[
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[
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[
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[
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[
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],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, chiefly Canada, US) The practice of trying to stop problems, etc., that repeatedly occur in an apparently random manner; also, the act of dealing with such matters in a piecemeal manner without achieving a complete solution."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "Whac-A-Mole"
},
{
"word": "whac-a-mole"
}
],
"tags": [
"Canada",
"US",
"countable",
"idiomatic",
"uncountable"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "practice of trying to stop problems, etc., that repeatedly occur in an apparently random manner; act of dealing with such matters in a piecemeal manner without achieving a complete solution",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "der Kampf gegen die Hydra"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"Whac-A-Mole"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˈwæk.əˌməʊl/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˈʍæk.əˌməʊl/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˈwæk.əˌmol/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˈʍæk.əˌmol/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"audio": "En-au-whack-a-mole.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/da/En-au-whack-a-mole.ogg/En-au-whack-a-mole.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/En-au-whack-a-mole.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "whack-a-mole"
}
{
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{
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"2": "whack",
"3": "a",
"4": "mole",
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},
"expansion": "whack + a + mole (“small, burrowing, insect-eating mammal of the family Talpidae”)",
"name": "compound"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "coined"
},
"expansion": "coined",
"name": "glossary"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "ja",
"2": "モグラ退治",
"lit": "Mole Extermination",
"tr": "Mogura Taiji"
},
"expansion": "モグラ退治 (Mogura Taiji, literally “Mole Extermination”)",
"name": "m"
}
],
"etymology_text": "From whack + a + mole (“small, burrowing, insect-eating mammal of the family Talpidae”), from the arcade game Whac-A-Mole which involves quickly and repeatedly hitting the heads of mechanical moles with a mallet as they pop up from holes. The name of the arcade game was coined in 1977 when it was first sold in the United States; the original game released in Japan in 1975 was called モグラ退治 (Mogura Taiji, literally “Mole Extermination”).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "whack-a-moles",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
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}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"American English",
"Canadian English",
"English 3-syllable words",
"English coinages",
"English compound terms",
"English countable nouns",
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"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms with IPA pronunciation",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"English terms with quotations",
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"English uncountable nouns"
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "Trying to get rid of spam e-mails is like whack-a-mole: as soon as you delete one, another appears.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "2007 November, Gil Schwartz, “The Office Politic: Escape from the Job Monster”, in David Zinczenko, editor, Men’s Health, volume 22, number 9, Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 122, column 1",
"text": "Identify a challenge. Put your shoulder into it. Make it go away. Just as it disappears, whoops, here comes another one. It's like a game of whack-a-mole. Trust me, you'll never run out of quarters.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2014 November 17, Roger Cohen, “The horror! The horror! The trauma of ISIS [print version: International New York Times, 18 November 2014, page 9]”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2021-06-10",
"text": "What is unbearable, in fact, is the feeling, 13 years after 9/11, that America has been chasing its tail; that, in some whack-a-mole horror show, the quashing of a jihadi enclave here only spurs the sprouting of another there; that the ideology of Al Qaeda is still reverberating through a blocked Arab world whose Sunni-Shia balance (insofar as that went) was upended by the American invasion of Iraq.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2020 August 29, Rebecca Nicholson, “Tom Cruise: Another groundbreaking role for cinema’s cheerleader”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2021-10-16",
"text": "Some flew across the United States; some were planning to fly into London from Europe, though, like many of us, they could only try their best to keep up with the government’s air corridor whack-a-mole.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2021 March 17, Drachinifel, 13:14 from the start, in Guadalcanal Campaign - The Big Night Battle: Night 2 (IJN 3(?) : 3 USN), archived from the original on 2022-07-14",
"text": "With power being redistributed automatically and surging through other circuits as the system tried to reroute electricity to keep things operational, various parts of the ship began to flicker internally as more and more breakers began to trip and were reset, only to trip again. Then, one of the engineers, tired of playing whack-a-mole, tied one of the more important breakers down so that it physically couldn't trip. This turned out to be a mistake, and a cascade overload crippled the ship's radar, radios, and power training on most of her guns. With no way of communicating with Washington, South Dakota simply held course whilst men in the switchboard room tried their best to reset the ship's entire electrical grid.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"The practice of trying to stop problems, etc., that repeatedly occur in an apparently random manner; also, the act of dealing with such matters in a piecemeal manner without achieving a complete solution."
],
"links": [
[
"practice",
"practice#Noun"
],
[
"trying",
"try#Verb"
],
[
"stop",
"stop#Verb"
],
[
"problems",
"problem#Noun"
],
[
"repeatedly",
"repeatedly"
],
[
"occur",
"occur"
],
[
"apparently",
"apparently"
],
[
"random",
"random"
],
[
"manner",
"manner"
],
[
"act",
"act#Noun"
],
[
"dealing with",
"deal with"
],
[
"matters",
"matter#Noun"
],
[
"piecemeal",
"piecemeal"
],
[
"achieving",
"achieve"
],
[
"complete",
"complete#Adjective"
],
[
"solution",
"solution#Noun"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, chiefly Canada, US) The practice of trying to stop problems, etc., that repeatedly occur in an apparently random manner; also, the act of dealing with such matters in a piecemeal manner without achieving a complete solution."
],
"tags": [
"Canada",
"US",
"countable",
"idiomatic",
"uncountable"
],
"wikipedia": [
"Whac-A-Mole"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˈwæk.əˌməʊl/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˈʍæk.əˌməʊl/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˈwæk.əˌmol/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˈʍæk.əˌmol/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"audio": "En-au-whack-a-mole.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/da/En-au-whack-a-mole.ogg/En-au-whack-a-mole.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/En-au-whack-a-mole.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "Whac-A-Mole"
},
{
"word": "whac-a-mole"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "practice of trying to stop problems, etc., that repeatedly occur in an apparently random manner; act of dealing with such matters in a piecemeal manner without achieving a complete solution",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "der Kampf gegen die Hydra"
}
],
"word": "whack-a-mole"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.