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Glite Dictionary
🐹 A pet wheel 🔄 Busy routine
squirrel cage

squirrel cage

5.0
A round wheel that small pets run in to get exercise
  • noun
  • /ˈskwɜrəl keɪdʒ/
translation icon : rueda de hámster
  • She watched her new hamster happily run in its squirrel cage every day.

Examples

  • The pet store displayed a colorful squirrel cage where hamsters ran for exercise.

  • The children were excited to see a squirrel cage filled with playful little animals.

  • He he created this squirrel cage thing, put his dog in there, made his dog run around like a hamster.

Surface Forms

squirrel cage singular
squirrel cages plural

Morphology

squirrel + cage

The image of a 'squirrel' (an active, restless rodent) in a 'cage' (confinement) readily evokes trapped, frenetic activity, so a learner can infer some figurative sense from the constituents. However, the specific appraisal 'constant activity with little or no real progress' is a metaphorical extension (similar to 'hamster wheel') and is not fully predictable from the literal parts, so a B1 learner may only partially infer the precise meaning without prior exposure.

Etymology

Squirrel cage is a round, rotating cage where a small animal like a hamster or squirrel runs inside and makes it turn, so the pet can exercise.