rat race

noun, Informal.
1.
any exhausting, unremitting, and usually competitive activity or routine, especially a pressured urban working life spent trying to get ahead with little time left for leisure, contemplation, etc.
Origin
1935-40, Americanism
Examples from the web for rat race
  • The flooding began flushing out rat holes around the lake, triggering a literal rat race for higher ground.
  • There might be five or six airplanes taking off around the same time and they'd rat race and play combat-type flying.
British Dictionary definitions for rat race

rat race

noun
1.
a continual routine of hectic competitive activity: working in the City is a real rat race
Slang definitions & phrases for rat race

rat race

noun phrase

A job, situation, milieu, etc, marked by confusion and stress; futile and enervating hyperactivity; the everyday world of toil and struggle; the routine workaday: the rat-race of ordinary social gatherings

[1939+; found by 1937 as the name of a dance]


Idioms and Phrases with rat race

rat race

Fierce competition to maintain or improve one's position in the workplace or social life. For example, You may not realize what a rat race it is to get research grants. This term presumably alludes to the rat's desperate struggle for survival. [ ; first half of 1900s ]