Catch-22 | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic)A difficultsituationfrom which there is no escape because it involves mutuallyconflictingor dependentconditions.Synonyms:no-win situation;see alsoThesaurus:dilemmaFor us it’s been a realCatch-22: when we have the time to take a vacation, we don’t have enough money, and when we have enough money, we don’t have the time.1988,E[dward] J[ames] Moran Campbell,Not Always on the Level,[London]: British Medical Journal,→ISBN,page194:Herein lies my personal “Catch 22”; the choice between three hours sleep and some discomfort or six hours sleep and real pain. Usually I choose the lesser evil of insomnia because in addition to the pain at 6am, I am incapacitated by the hangover from the sedative.2008, Zev Handel, “What is Sino-Tibetan? Snapshot of a Field and a Language Family in Flux”, inLanguage and Linguistics Compass, volume 2, number 3,→DOI, pages422-441:Overall, the subgrouping issue in S[ino-]T[ibetan]studies is plagued by a familiarCatch-22. Until a more complete reconstruction of P[roto-]S[ino-]T[ibetan]exists, it is difficult to accurately identify shared innovations. Yet, without a clear subgrouping, it is difficult to properly weight and evaluate data from the daughter languages in order to refine PST reconstructions.

Examples:

EN: Sure, Catch-22.
ES: La norma 22.
EN: That's Catch-22.
ES: Ésa es la norma 22.
ES: Es un dilema sin solución.
EN: - That's some catch, that Catch-22.
ES: - ¡Menuda norma la 22!
EN: - Catch-22.
ES: - La norma 22.
ES: - Norma 22.
EN: Catch-22.
ES: Norma 22.
ES: La ley de la norma 22.
ES: Es absurdo.
EN: How do you know it was Catch-22?
ES: ¿Cómo sabe qué es eso?
EN: The men said, "Catch-22."
ES: Contestaron: "Norma 22".
ES: Los soldados dijeron: "Norma 22".
EN: All they kept saying was, "Catch-22, Catch-22."
ES: Sólo decían: "Norma 22, norma 22".
ES: Sólo decían: "Norma 22, norma 22".
EN: It's like Catch-22 except twice as bad. Yeah.
ES: Es como Trampa-22 sólo que el doble de malo.
EN: It's kind of a Catch-22.
ES: Es algo así como la trampa oculta.
EN: Sounds like a Catch-22 to me.
ES: Día de Acción de Gracias. Tengo un sorpresa
EN: That's the Catch-22.
ES: Es un callejón sin salida.
EN: Catch-22, isn't it?
ES: Es un círculo vicioso, ¿no?
EN: Therein lies your Catch-22.
ES: Alli yace tu dilema.
EN: And Catch-22 because by that point she had to find a surrogate that was okay with her age.
ES: El problema fue que, para entonces debía hallar una sustituta que aceptara su edad.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).