yak shaving
Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing one to overcome intermediate…Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing one to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows one to solve a larger problem.
Meaning
2 senses(uncountable)Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing one to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows one to solve a larger problem.
I was doing a bit of yak shaving this morning, and it looks like it might have paid off.
(uncountable)A less useful activity done consciously or subconsciously to procrastinate about a larger but more useful task.
I looked at a reference manual for my car just to answer one question, but I spent the whole afternoon with my nose buried in it, just yak shaving, and got no work done on the car itself.
For quotations using this term, see Citations:yak shaving.
Origin
Coined by Carlin Vieri in his time at the MIT AI Lab (1993–1998) after viewing a segment aCoined by Carlin Vieri in his time at the MIT AI Lab (1993–1998) after viewing a segment at the end of "The Boy Who Cried Rat!" (1991), the sixth episode of the first season of The Ren and Stimpy Show. The segment featured "Yak Shaving Day", a Christmas-like holiday where participants watch for the shaven yak to float by in his enchanted canoe.
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Word family
1 related wordsLessons for this word
1 lessons- A1Countable and uncountable nouns — Because it can be uncountable