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.

rat race

noun

1. a continual routine of hectic competitive activity

   working in the City is a real rat race

Word History and Origins

Origin of rat race¹

An Americanism dating back to 1935–40

Idioms and Phrases

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. [ Colloquial ; first half of 1900s]

Example Sentences

The Daily Pic: James Nares slows Manhattan's rat race to a snail's pace.

From The Daily Beast

To stay, and attempt to make the cartel rat-race over, sweetly and rationally so that no one would be hurt?

From Project Gutenberg

They suffered the ever-present agitation of envy, the constant comparison to one's superiors, the plagued rat race.

From Project Gutenberg

But under torment of insomnia the many selves of the mind may abandon the congress of reason and start a rat-race.

From Project Gutenberg