What Does “rabbit hole” mean?
Definition:
A rabbit hole refers to a world that is particularly bazar, troubling and wonderfully surreal. It is a world that is typically difficult to remove oneself from.
The phrase is mostly used with the verbs ‘fall’ and ‘go’.
– Fall down the rabbit hole.
– Go down the rabbit hole.
Origin
The phrase rabbit hole comes from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). It refers to the hole down which the heroine falls. Alice sees a rabbit in the garden and literally falls down the rabbit hole. What happens after that is that she finds herself in a place called wonderland, a place ‘where logic and proportion have fallen cold and dead.’
The idiom rabbit hole is also used to describe online activities which are extremely captivating and time-consuming.
Example(s)
– School’s starting up again, time to go down the rabbit hole once more.
– You have to be ready to go down the rabbit hole if you decide to start your own business.
– She doesn’t want to become addicted to drugs, so she decided to avoid going down that rabbit hole.
