rabbit hole

noun

: a complexly bizarre or difficult state or situation conceived of as a hole into which one falls or descends

I wanted to show this woman descending into the rabbit hole: this loss of self, becoming a servant to her job and to the work.

—Jessica Chastain

especially : one in which the pursuit of something (such as an answer or solution) leads to other questions, problems, or pursuits

While trying to find the picture again on Google, I fell down the Cosmo rabbit hole, scrolling through a gallery of swimwear, then through "How to Be Sexier-Instantly" and then through all 23 slides of "Sexy Ideas for Long Hair."

—Edith Zimmerman

Because it is so early on in this work it is easy to say that we are either at the edge of a remarkable new and useful science or that we are careering down an environmental rabbit hole.

—Jack Hitt

In the season-two premiere of HBO's Westworld, viewers were again tossed down a rabbit hole filled with theories, where one open door leads to many more closed ones.

—Josh Wigler and Zoe Haylock

Synonyms

• dilemma
• predicament
• pickle
• hole
• bind
• swamp
• corner

Examples of rabbit hole in a Sentence

shoreline residents are finding themselves helplessly falling down a rabbit hole in their Sisyphean efforts to halt beach erosion

Recent Examples on the Web

Those conversations took me down a rabbit hole of state regulations and local ordinances, which ultimately led me to Elizabethtown, which helped lobby for state laws to allow local governments to have more oversight into recovery homes. —Keely Doll, Louisville Courier Journal, 13 Oct. 2025

Soon, Ron is on a quest that leads to enough rabbit holes to make QAnon envious. —Julie Hinds, Freep.com, 10 Oct. 2025

No time machine could take Russell back to her younger self, the Denver teen-ager who’d fallen down the rabbit hole. —Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker, 6 Oct. 2025

But after arriving to the property, she’s lured into a desperate scavenger hunt down a perilous rabbit hole. —Zac Ntim, Deadline, 6 Oct. 2025

Word History

Etymology

from the rabbit hole that Alice enters in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

First Known Use

1938, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for rabbit hole

• amphibole
• asystole
• buttonhole
• casserole
• centriole
• decontrol
• glycerol
• metropole
• monopole
• multipole
• omeprazole
• oriole