a meandering path that has only a tangential connection to the issue at hand; if pursued it will derail a group from its core task or objective, and so the term is usually invoked as a gentle reminder to stay focused, as in “We could try to model the macroeconomic factors at play, but let’s not go down that rabbit trail”; from the notion that rabbits’ movements are chaotic with no regular or predictable structure, such that following them requires excessive effort with low probability of actually finding one; alternative version is rabbit hole, used interchangeably