squirrel cage
- noun
- Informal
:
circuito sin fin
- He often compared his hectic schedule to running in a squirrel cage: always moving, but getting nowhere.
Examples
-
The team found themselves trapped in a squirrel cage of endless meetings and paperwork.
-
Working in that office feels like a squirrel cage.
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After months in the squirrel cage of city life, she needed a break in the countryside.
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Her life has become a squirrel cage of endless meetings.
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After months in the squirrel cage of city life, she needed a break in the countryside.
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He often compared his hectic schedule to running in a squirrel cage: always moving, but getting nowhere.
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The team found themselves trapped in a squirrel cage of endless meetings and paperwork.
Synonyms
1
5.5
A routine of repeated tasks that makes no progress
Antonyms
How Frantic
- Informal
Surface Forms
Morphology
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 paints a picture of an animal running hard inside a small wheel but staying in one place, so people use it for a life or job where you are very busy but 'getting nowhere'.