rabbit holen.
/ˈrabɪt ˌhəʊl/, U.S. /ˈræbət ˌ(h)oʊl/ 1. A hole in the ground made or inhabited by a rabbit; also figurative and in extended use.
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the world > animals > mammals > group Unguiculata or clawed mammal > order Lagomorpha (rabbits and hares) > [noun] > family Leporidae > genus Oryctolagus (rabbit) > burrow or warren
clapperc1400
cunnigar1424
warrena1425
coneygarth1429
coney-close?1472
coney hole?c1475
berry1486
coney holda1500
coney-clapper1530
coney yard1532
coneyry1570
coney burrow1575
coney gratec1580
coney-gat1591
coney green1599
coney warren1616
coney ground1617
rabbit hole1667
stop1669
rabbit burrow1723
stock1736
rabbit warren1766
stab1838
warrener1864
1667 Bp. J. Taylor 2nd Pt. Dissuasive from Popery ii. ii. 23 He sets down what he list, and makes breaches and Rabbet holes to pop in as he please.
1705 G. Berkeley Descr. Cave of Dunmore in Wks. (1871) IV. iv. 507 The earth turned up at the entrance of a rabbit-hole.
1885 A. Brassey In Trades 264 We were assured..that there were no rabbit-holes in the fields.
1924 Jrnl. Afr. Soc. 23 232 It was no larger than a rabbit-hole.
2005 P. R. Keefe Chatter vii. 177 It is only from these books..that employees can glean an aerial sense of the..scope of the institution beyond their individual rabbit holes.
2. figurative. Used to indicate passage into a strange, surreal, or nonsensical situation or environment. Chiefly in down a (also the) rabbit hole.With allusion to ‘L. Carroll’ Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), which describes how the protagonist, Alice, enters a land of magic and strange logic by falling down a rabbit hole.
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1938 Yale Law Jrnl. 48 32 It is the Rabbit-Hole down which we fell into the Law, and to him who has gone down it, no queer performance is strange.
1975 Newsweek 28 Apr. 79/2 We slid down a rabbit hole into a Boston underworld where small-time hoods were already hard at work.
1988 Globe & Mail (Toronto) (Nexis) 13 July Did I just fall down a rabbit hole, is the irrational in the ascendancy?
1997 Times (Nexis) 20 June Down the rabbit hole again, and into the surreal world of City politics.
2004 New Yorker 12 Apr. 30/1 A journey down a telecom rabbit hole, where one encountered complicated regulatory rulings..and puzzling invocations of..statutes.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, June 2008; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1667