Word.ws English Dictionary

whack-a-mole

UK/ˈwæk.əˌməʊl/US/ˈwæk.əˌmoʊl/

whack-a-mole noun: a situation where problems or tasks keep reappearing repeatedly.

Noun

whack-a-mole (countable and uncountable, plural whack-a-moles)

  1. (Canada, US, idiomatic) A situation where problems or tasks keep reappearing repeatedly.
    • Trying to get rid of spam e-mails is like whack-a-mole: as soon as you delete one, another appears.
    • Identify a challenge. Put your shoulder into it. Make it go away. Just as it disappears, whoops, here comes another one. It's like a game of whack-a-mole. Trust me, you'll never run out of quarters.2007 November, Gil Schwartz, “The Office Politic: Escape from the Job Monster”, in David Zinczenko, editor, Men’s Health, volume 22, number 9, Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 122, column 1
  2. (Canada, US, idiomatic) A strategy of addressing recurrent, unpredictable problems in a piecemeal, temporary way at their point of emergence.
    • "There's a range of different areas where AI can pose a risk, and we can't have a sort of - as I've previously said - a whack-a-mole approach," Mr Husic said.2026 July 17, Zac de Silva and Jacob Shteyman, “Standards for AI, data centres unveiled in major speech”, in MSN

Forms of whack-a-mole

pluralwhack-a-moles
alternative formWhac-A-Mole
alternative formwhac-a-mole

Origin of whack-a-mole

From whack + a + mole (“a small, burrowing, insect-eating mammal of the family Talpidae”), from the arcade game Whac-A-Mole which involves quickly and repeatedly hitting the heads of mechanical moles with a mallet as they pop up from holes. The name of the arcade game was coined in 1977 when it was first sold in the United States; the original game released in Japan in 1975 was called モグラ退治 (Mogura Taiji, literally “Mole Extermination”).

Questions about whack-a-mole

What does whack-a-mole mean?
Whack-a-mole means a situation where problems or tasks keep reappearing repeatedly.
What part of speech is whack-a-mole?
Whack-a-mole is a noun.
How do you pronounce whack-a-mole?
Whack-a-mole is pronounced /ˈwæk.əˌməʊl/ (UK).
What is the plural of whack-a-mole?
The plural of whack-a-mole is whack-a-moles.

Words near whack-a-mole in the dictionary

  1. whack out
  2. whack shack
  3. whack shacks
  4. whack the illy
  5. whack up
  6. whack-a-mole
  7. whack-a-moles
  8. whack-up
  9. whack-ups
  10. whackable
  11. whackadoo

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whack-a-mole (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-whack-a-mole.ogg.

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