Meaning
A grinding, competitive way of life in which people chase money, status, or security at exhausting speed, typically in urban work. The phrase stresses the futility of the pursuit: constant motion, constant rivalry, and no real finish line. Informal and disapproving; nearly always takes the definite article and pairs with escape verbs such as quit, leave, or get out of. Regional use: General English (American in origin).
Origin
American in origin. Christine Ammer's Dictionary of Cliches traces the expression to Christopher Morley's novel Kitty Foyle (1939), which remarks that a couple's private life gets to be a rat race, and Etymonline likewise dates the competitive-struggle sense to 1939. Etymonline also records an earlier specialized use: from 1934 a rat race named a follow-the-leader exercise in fighter-pilot training, described in a 1941 Popular Science article. Literal rat races, in which rodents ran for wagers, were carnival and tavern attractions; an 1848 Sporting Review item recalls one held in a London public house around 1811. The literal contests and the pilot slang plausibly fed the image of frantic circular chasing, but no consulted source proves a single chain of descent. Usage was mainstream by the 1950s, appearing in The New Yorker in 1953 and in William H. Whyte's The Organization Man (1956).
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- escape the rat race
- out of the rat race
- rat-race (adjective)
Usage Examples
- After twenty years of the rat race he quit, sold the apartment, and opened a tiny bookshop on the coast.
- Nobody wins the rat race here; people answer email at midnight just to look loyal to the boss.
- She left the rat race not because she hated work, but because she hated competing for its own sake.