wheels within wheels

Idioms and Phrases

Complex interacting processes, agents, or motives, as in It's difficult to find out just which government agency is responsible; there are wheels within wheels . This term, which now evokes the complex interaction of gears, may derive from a scene in the Bible (Ezekiel 1:16): “Their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.” [c. 1600]

Example Sentences

There is often talk of wheels within wheels in Pakistan; intricate power dynamics and moves, alliances and grudges.

From BBC

As with nearly everything he wrote, there’s a sense of wheels within wheels.

From New York Times

“By my first birthday she could no longer walk without the aid of a stick and by my second she could no longer walk at all,” Ms. Murphy wrote in her 1979 memoir, “Wheels Within Wheels.”

From Washington Post

At first glance a standard crime story, the novel is “a more piercing tale of investigation, one revealing how the mind drives on its own ‘wheels within wheels,’” wrote our reviewer.

From New York Times

“There are so many wheels within wheels right now. I have never seen anything like it.”

From New York Times

Related Words

• arduous
• convoluted
• difficult
• fancy
• hard
• intricate
• knotty
• perplexing
• problematic
• sophisticated
• troublesome