Whack-a-mole
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A situation where problems or tasks keep reappearing repeatedly. Canada, US, countable, idiomatic, uncountable
"Trying to get rid of spam e-mails is like whack-a-mole: as soon as you delete one, another appears."
- 2 A strategy of addressing recurrent, unpredictable problems in a piecemeal, temporary way at their point of emergence. Canada, US, countable, idiomatic, uncountable
Example
More examples"As a result, some countries that have tight pandemic restrictions in place are planning to abandon them for a few days at least, including “whack-a-mole” strategies aimed at suppressing local outbreaks of contagion."
Etymology
From whack + a + mole (“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”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.