Go down a rabbit hole means get absorbed in a topic, following one thing to the next: I searched for one train timetable and went down a rabbit hole of railway history. The image comes from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Alice follows a rabbit down its hole into a strange world.
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go down a rabbit hole; a rabbit hole of information; send someone down a rabbit hole
- I searched for one train timetable and went down a rabbit hole of railway history.
- The question sent the team down a rabbit hole of old design decisions.
- Before going down that rabbit hole, let us finish the comparison we started.
What changed
First versionOne link sent me down rabbit hole of historical photographs.
RevisionOne link sent me down a rabbit hole of historical photographs.
Articles are easy to skip in idioms, and down rabbit hole sounds like a headline. But hole is a countable noun: down a rabbit hole, down that rabbit hole.
Research a topic is the neutral way to say you study it. Go down a rabbit hole means you get so absorbed that you drift far from the original question; it can be fascinating or a waste of time.
Your turn
Complete the common research idiom: I went ___ a rabbit hole reading about abandoned theatres.
Show the answer
down — You go down into a hole: go down a rabbit hole. Across means from one side to the other and doesn't form the idiom.
Describe how a simple question pulled you into a long dive into a topic, using go down a rabbit hole.
I looked up a lighthouse on a map and went down a rabbit hole about how its keepers lived.
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