hairball

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a compact mass of swallowed hair or fur formed in the digestive tract of a person or animal; a trichobezoar

   The veterinarian examined the cat after it coughed up a hairball.

2. 2
   noun

   informal: a tangled, complicated, or intractable problem

   The merger created a legal hairball that took months to untangle.

A compound of hair + ball, named for the rounded mass formed when swallowed hair accumulates in the digestive tract. The figurative sense compares a difficult, tangled problem to such a compacted mass.

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