yak shaving

短语

发音

US

释义与例句

n.
  1. 1.

    Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing one to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows one to solve a larger problem.

    不可数

    I was doing a bit of yak shaving this morning, and it looks like it might have paid off.

  2. 2.

    A less useful activity done consciously or subconsciously to procrastinate about a larger but more useful task.

    不可数

    I looked at a reference manual for my car just to answer one question, but I spent the whole afternoon with my nose buried in it, just yak shaving, and got no work done on the car itself.

    For quotations using this term, see Citations:yak shaving.

词源

Coined by Carlin Vieri in his time at the MIT AI Lab (1993–1998) after viewing a segment at the end of "The Boy Who Cried Rat!" (1991), the sixth episode of the first season of The Ren and Stimpy Show. The segment featured "Yak Shaving Day", a Christmas-like holiday where participants watch for the shaven yak to float by in his enchanted canoe.

来源：wiktionary