hamster wheel

hamster wheel noun: a circular cage for a hamster or other small rodent, which rotates vertically as the animal runs at its base.

Image: DataBase Center for Life Science (DBCLS), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

hamster wheel (plural hamster wheels)

A circular cage for a hamster or other small rodent, which rotates vertically as the animal runs at its base.

Synonyms:

squirrel cage
(broadly, figuratively) A monotonous, repetitive, unfulfilling activity, especially one in which no progress is achieved.
- The overall mood of this volume is one of melancholy and loss, weary resignation to one's lot—trudging round and round on the rusty hamster wheel of life.2002 June 28, Michiko Kakutani, “Books of the Times”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 07 Dec 2019, retrieved 23 Sep 2008
- Before the current pandemic, the rail industry appeared to be trapped on an ever-accelerating hamster wheel, trying to keep up with customer demand and political expectation on an essentially historic system itself exposed to greater impacts of climate change.2020 May 6, Prof. Andrew McNaughton, “Time to challenge some sacred philosophies of recent years”, in Rail, page 32
Synonyms:

rat race

hamster wheel (third-person singular simple present hamster wheels, present participle hamster wheeling, simple past and past participle hamster wheeled)

(idiomatic, informal, intransitive) To cycle fruitlessly.
- I was shocked that I'd forgotten about the game that morning, but my mind had hamster-wheeled around for hours during the night, long after I should have been asleep.2015, Patti Grayson, Ghost Most Foul, page 111
- But my brain was hamster-wheeling on that one hopefully-not-true-but-probably-was fact.2019, Mary Hughes, M. J. Chase, Chicago's Chosen

Noun
plural	hamster wheels
alternative form	hamster-wheel
Verb
third-person singular present	hamster wheels
present participle	hamster wheeling
past participle	hamster wheeled
past	hamster wheeled

What does hamster wheel mean?: Hamster wheel means a circular cage for a hamster or other small rodent, which rotates vertically as the animal runs at its base.
What part of speech is hamster wheel?: Hamster wheel can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of hamster wheel?: The plural of hamster wheel is hamster wheels.

Adapted from Wiktionary: hamster wheel (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “hamster wheel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hamster_wheel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.