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

But Dharmendra wore his stardom lightly, staying away from the rat race and said he never wanted to be number one in the industry.

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Yet the pressures - the ones that are pushing more Chinese youth to quit the rat race, "lie flat" and take their frustrations out online - remain.

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Imagine this: After years of toiling in the Southern California rat race, you buy a parcel of land in the high desert.

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Norway's Casper Ruud criticised the ranking system earlier this year, describing it as "a rat race", while Australian world number nine Alex de Minaur put his early French Open exit down to "feeling burned out".

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Tangping, or “lying flat,” became a ubiquitous term for opting out of the rat race, not unlike the term “quiet quitting” in the U.S.

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