an intricate combination of paths or passages in which it is difficult to find one's way or to reach the exit.
a maze of paths bordered by high hedges, as in a park or garden, for the amusement of those who search for a way out.
a complicated or tortuous arrangement, as of streets or buildings.
any confusingly intricate state of things or events; a bewildering complex.
His papers were lost in an hellish bureaucratic labyrinth.
After the death of her daughter, she wandered in a labyrinth of sorrow for what seemed like a decade.
Classical Mythology. Labyrinth. a vast maze built in Crete by Daedalus, at the command of King Minos, to house the Minotaur.
Anatomy.
the internal ear, consisting of a bony portion bony labyrinth and a membranous portion membranous labyrinth.
the aggregate of air chambers in the ethmoid bone, between the eye and the upper part of the nose.
a mazelike pattern inlaid in the pavement of a church.
Also called acoustic labyrinth;. Also called acoustical labyrinth. Audio. a loudspeaker enclosure with air chambers at the rear for absorbing sound waves radiating in one direction so as to prevent their interference with waves radiated in another direction.
a mazelike network of tunnels, chambers, or paths, either natural or man-made Compare maze
any complex or confusing system of streets, passages, etc
a complex or intricate situation
any system of interconnecting cavities, esp those comprising the internal ear
another name for internal ear
electronics an enclosure behind a high-performance loudspeaker, consisting of a series of air chambers designed to absorb unwanted sound waves
A labyrinth can be literally a maze or figuratively any highly intricate construction or problem.
First recorded in 1540–50; from Latin labyrinthus, from Greek labýrinthos; replacing earlier laborynt, from Medieval Latin laborintus, Latin, as above
A labyrinth is a structure with many connected paths or passages in which it is hard to find your way. In figurative use, a labyrinth is a complicated situation: our tax code is a labyrinth of rules and regulations. In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was the structure built for King Minos of Crete to confine the Minotaur, a monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man. The word maze is a near synonym for labyrinth, and is also used figuratively, as in, "After war broke out, trying to figure out how to get a visa to leave the country was like navigating a maze, a veritable labyrinth of wrong turns and false hope."
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He returned with a torch and said it felt like "a labyrinth".
From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2026
The furniture maker’s shoppers once navigated an 18,000-square-foot labyrinth of couches, chairs and decor at its headquarters here.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
When she came to “Rooster,” she said, Cristle was a conceptual kernel she teased into a labyrinth.
From Salon ● May 11, 2026
There’s a labyrinth of restrictions that make HSAs confusing.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 30, 2026
She was his match: a child of spirit just like him, a fellow traveler in this mystical Brooklyn labyrinth.
From "Shadowshaper" by Daniel José Older
Last week, Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro criticised AI-generated video during a talk at the British Film Institute in London, saying it could not generate much beyond "semi-compelling screensavers".
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2024
By LaDarrion Williams Labyrinth Road: 432 pages, $21 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 3, 2024
Halls Hill Lookout & Labyrinth is dedicated to Noel Burk, who passed away in 2005.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 4, 2024
Labyrinth Chollima is one of North Korea’s most prolific hacking groups and is said to be responsible for some of the isolated country’s most daring and disruptive cyber intrusions.
From Reuters ● Jul. 20, 2023
How could he describe the Labyrinth to someone who’d never explored it?
From "The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan
The stations are designed as logical sequences of space, not as labyrinths you wander through.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
As art objects, they draw from ’60s minimalism: her monoliths, prisms, cubes, spheres, matrices, labyrinths and French curves are finished in porcelain-white, each a pristine, planar specimen.
From New York Times ● Jan. 16, 2024
With help from an experienced underwater cave-diving team, Northwestern University researchers have constructed the most complete map to date of the microbial communities living in the submerged labyrinths beneath Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 10, 2023
At one of the group’s online meetings, she hesitantly offered up walking labyrinths as a potential tool for healing and connection.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 4, 2023
His political advisers easily entangled him in theoretical labyrinths.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
