"Down the rabbit hole" is an English-language idiom or trope which refers to getting deep into something, or ending up somewhere strange. Lewis Carroll introduced the phrase as the title for chapter one of his 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland , after which the term slowly entered the English vernacular. The term is usually used as a metaphor for distraction. [1] In the 21st century, the term has come to describe a person who gets lost in research or loses track of time while using the internet.
In 1865, Lewis Carroll introduced the idiom in the novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland . The chapter one title was, "Chapter One – Down the Rabbit Hole". Alice follows a white rabbit with pink eyes because she saw the rabbit checking a pocket watch. She chases the rabbit, and it bounds into a rabbit hole. [2] Alice falls into the rabbit hole, and it is a long fall, which leads her to "Wonderland". [3] In the novel, after the fall, the main character ends up in a world in which the rules of our shared reality do not apply. [4]
In the 21st century, the term has come to mean a person ended up somewhere mentally rather than physically. Usually, a person uses the term when they describe having spent too much time on something or getting too involved. [3] With the advent of the internet, the term has taken on the meaning of getting lost in a topic or researching one topic and ending up in another. [1] It has become a metaphor for distraction. It has come to mean that someone has become interested in something, usually by accident; and often the subject does not deserve the amount of attention that a person gives. [1]
The idiom is often used to describe a person who is researching a topic on the internet or exploring new things on the web. [5] [6] Many websites are designed to keep users engaged. Websites which are most successful at keeping a user's attention are described as "rabbit holes". The term often has a positive connotation: falling down a rabbit hole often suggests that a person engaged in a guilty pleasure. [1] It has also come to mean that a person ended up in a strange or difficult situation; [4] "A complexly bizarre or difficult state or situation conceived of as a hole into which one falls or descends". [7]
The idiom is also used to describe drug use, and the experience of an addict. [8] The term can also be used to describe an individual's psychedelic experience. [3]
In the movie The Matrix , Morpheus offers Neo the red pill and says, "You stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." [1] [9]
"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The book tells of Alice's adventures within the back-to-front world of the Looking-Glass world.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre. The artist John Tenniel provided 42 wood-engraved illustrations for the book.
Alice is a fictional character and the main protagonist of Lewis Carroll's children's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass (1871). A child in the mid-Victorian era, Alice unintentionally goes on an underground adventure after falling down a rabbit hole into Wonderland; in the sequel, she steps through a mirror into an alternative world.
The Cheshire Cat is a fictional cat popularised by Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and known for its distinctive mischievous grin. While now most often used in Alice-related contexts, the association of a "Cheshire cat" with grinning predates the 1865 book. It has transcended the context of literature and become enmeshed in popular culture, appearing in various forms of media, from political cartoons to television, as well as in cross-disciplinary studies, from business to science. Often it is shown in the context of a person or idea that is purposefully confusing or enigmatic. One distinguishing feature of the Alice-style Cheshire Cat is the periodic gradual disappearance of its body, leaving only one last visible trace: its iconic grin. He belongs to the Duchess.
The Hatter is a fictional character in Lewis Carroll's 1865 book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its 1871 sequel Through the Looking-Glass. He is very often referred to as the Mad Hatter, though this term was never used by Carroll. The phrase "mad as a hatter" pre-dates Carroll's works. The Hatter and the March Hare are referred to as "both mad" by the Cheshire Cat, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in the sixth chapter titled "Pig and Pepper".
The White Rabbit is a fictional and anthropomorphic character in Lewis Carroll's 1865 book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He appears at the very beginning of the book, in chapter one, wearing a waistcoat, and muttering "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" Alice follows him down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Alice encounters him again when he mistakes her for his housemaid Mary Ann and she becomes trapped in his house after growing too large. The Rabbit shows up again in the last few chapters, as a herald-like servant of the King and Queen of Hearts.
Alice is a 1988 surrealist dark fantasy film written and directed by Jan Švankmajer. Its original Czech title is Něco z Alenky, which means "Something from Alice". It is a loose adaptation of Lewis Carroll's first Alice book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), about a girl who chases a white rabbit into a bizarre fantasy land. Alice is played by Kristýna Kohoutová. The film combines live-action with stop-motion animation, and is distinguished by its dark production design.
The red pill and blue pill are metaphorical terms representing a choice between learning an unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the "red pill" or remaining in the contented experience of ordinary reality with the "blue pill". The pills were used as props in the 1999 film The Matrix.
Adventures in Wonderland is a 1992–95 American live-action/puppet musical television series based on the novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll as well as the 1951 animated film. In the series, Alice, is portrayed as a girl who can come and go from Wonderland simply by walking through her mirror.
"White Rabbit" is a song written by Grace Slick and recorded by the American rock band Jefferson Airplane for their 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow. It draws on imagery from Lewis Carroll's 1865 book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its 1871 sequel Through the Looking-Glass.
Alice in Wonderland is a 1903 British silent fantasy film directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow. Only one copy of the original film is known to exist. The British Film Institute (BFI) partially restored the movie and its original film tinting and released it in 2010. According to BFI, the original film ran about 12 minutes; the restoration runs 9 minutes and 35 seconds. At the beginning of the restoration, it states that this is the first movie adaptation of Lewis Carroll's 1865 children's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It was filmed mostly at Port Meadow in Oxford.
Lewis Carroll's books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) have been highly popular in their original forms, and have served as the basis for many subsequent works since they were published. They have been adapted directly into other media, their characters and situations have been appropriated into other works, and these elements have been referenced innumerable times as familiar elements of shared culture. Simple references to the two books are too numerous to list; this list of works based on Alice in Wonderland focuses on works based specifically and substantially on Carroll's two books about the character of Alice.
Down the Rabbit Hole is a metaphor for adventure into the unknown, from its use in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It may also refer to:
The phrase "when pigs fly" is an adynaton—a figure of speech so hyperbolic that it describes an impossibility. The implication of such a phrase is that the circumstances in question will never occur. The phrase has been used in various forms since the 1600s as a sarcastic remark.
Alice in Wonderland is a 1949 French film based on Lewis Carroll's 1865 fantasy novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Directed by Dallas Bower, the film stars Carol Marsh as Alice, Stephen Murray as Lewis Carroll, and Raymond Bussières as The Tailor. Most of the Wonderland characters are portrayed by stop-motion animated puppets created by Lou Bunin.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a 10-minute black-and-white silent film made in the United States in 1910, and is based on Lewis Carroll's 1865 book of the same name.
Alice in Verse: The Lost Rhymes of Wonderland (2010) is a reimagining of Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland written by British-American author J.T. Holden. It tells the story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 19 rhyming poems, each written in the same style as Lewis Carroll's original verse. The book includes 36 illustrations by American artist Andrew Johnson.
Alice in Wonderland is a platform video game developed by Digital Eclipse Software and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Color. It was released in North America on October 4, 2000. The game follows the plot of the 1951 animated Disney film of the same name.
Wonderland is the setting for Lewis Carroll's 1865 children's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The wiki rabbit hole is the learning pathway which a reader travels by navigating from topic to topic while browsing Wikipedia and other wikis. The metaphor of a rabbit hole comes from Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in which Alice begins an adventure by following the White Rabbit into his burrow. The black hole metaphor comes from the idea that the reader is powerfully sucked into a hole from which they cannot escape.