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]

Related Words

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