hamster wheel
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.28 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
2
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A circular cage for a hamster or other small rodent, which rotates vertically as the animal runs at its base.
noun
A monotonous, repetitive, unfulfilling activity, especially one in which no progress is achieved.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
- "But my brain was hamster-wheeling on that one hopefully-not-true-but-probably-was fact."