This morning I sat down to do some research for an English video I wanted to write. So, I started reading an article about that topic, which led to another article, and then a video and it went on like that until eventually I was reading about time travel! Then my husband came in and told me it was time for lunch.

WHAT???

I felt like I had time travelled a few hours into the future. I hadn’t written a single word. I had gone down a rabbit hole! But it gave me inspiration for this video, so it wasn’t a total waste of my time.

Down The Rabbit Hole

Down the rabbit hole is an expression we can use when we get so caught up in the search for something – like an answer to a problem or some research as in my case – that we end up somewhere completely different.

You can fall, be led or go down a rabbit hole.

Think about a rabbit hole or warren – it has lots of tunnels that lead in different directions. The easiest way to go down a rabbit hole is through the internet, as I found out this morning!

Types of Rabbit Hole

We can use other words to describe the type of rabbit hole we have fallen into.  For example, if you are interested in climate change and are researching the subject, you might go down a ‘climate-change’ rabbit hole and emerge hours later. Or if you are researching your family history, you might go down an ‘ancestry’ rabbit hole.

Another way to use this expression comes from the Lewis Carroll book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The main character, Alice, literally falls into a rabbit hole and keeps falling down, down, down, past many strange and wonderful things. Then when she gets to the bottom, Alice has an exciting adventure, where even stranger things happen.

Examples

So, if a situation, a process or a journey becomes increasingly strange, chaotic or complex, we can use this expression down a rabbit hole to describe it. The situation might feel quite surreal, or weird.

Example
Becoming a pop star has taken me to places I never would have dreamed possible. It has been like falling down the rabbit hole.

Or the situation might feel overwhelmingly complicated.

Example
She didn’t realise that to start a business she would have to go down a rabbit hole of red tape.

Conclusion

What about you? Have you ever fallen down a rabbit hole? What have you started doing that has led you somewhere unexpected? Have you been in a chaotic situation or on a journey where lots of strange things happened?

Write about it in the comments section on YouTube. I would love to hear about it!

Until next time!