Word.ws English Dictionary

roach motel

roach motel noun: a low-priced motel in a state of disrepair.

Noun

roach motel (plural roach motels)

  1. (derogatory, slang) A low-priced motel in a state of disrepair.
  2. (figuratively, slang) Something that is easy to enter, but is difficult or costly to leave.
    • 8.3.1 The Importance of Easy Access: Avoid the “Roach Motel!” In Chapter 6, we discussed what a “roach motel” was. You can get data into a “roach motel”, but you can't easily get it out.2010, William H. Inmon, Bonnie O'Neil, Lowell Fryman, Business Metadata: Capturing Enterprise Knowledge, page 141
    • Don't hope for a better shake from Apple, either. Apple's longstanding love-affair with proprietary formats and lock-ins will very likely make the iPad every inch the roach motel that the Kindle is2011, Cory Doctorow, Context, page 102
  3. (genericized trademark) A cockroach trap.

Examples of roach motel in a sentence

  • The “Roach Motel” is a broad category of Dark Pattern that subsumes most types listed on this site.2015, Scot R. Wheeler, Architecting Experience: A Marketing Science and Digital Analytics Handbook, page 186:
  • Then you've been to a roach motel - one of many web design tricks employed by some firms to drum up more trade.2016 June 8, Zoe Kleinman, “Is the web full of nasty tricks?”, in BBC News:
  • MAHONEY: In the beginning, the NYSE was truly the roach motel.2022, Robert A. Schwartz, John Aidan Byrne, Eileen Stempel, 40 Years of Experience with the National Market System (NMS), page 51:

Forms of roach motel

pluralroach motels

Origin of roach motel

Since low-cost motels are frequently associated with substandard conditions, including potential problems such as cockroach infestations. The phrase describing a situation as “easy to enter, but is difficult or costly to leave” originates from the American cockroach bait product known as Roach Motel, which was marketed using the slogan, “Roaches check in, but they don’t check out.”

Questions about roach motel

What does roach motel mean?
Roach motel means a low-priced motel in a state of disrepair.
How do you use roach motel in a sentence?
The “Roach Motel” is a broad category of Dark Pattern that subsumes most types listed on this site.
What part of speech is roach motel?
Roach motel is a noun.
What is the plural of roach motel?
The plural of roach motel is roach motels.

Words near roach motel in the dictionary

  1. roach coaches
  2. roach fogger
  3. roach foggers
  4. roach killer
  5. roach killers
  6. roach motel
  7. roach motels
  8. roach out
  9. roach stomper
  10. roach stompers
  11. roach-backed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: roach motel (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.

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Cite this entry: “roach motel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/roach_motel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.