Catch-22 typically refers to a difficult situation for which there is no easy or possible solution. In the narrowest use of the term, it refers to a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule.

// I’m in a catch-22: to get the job I need experience, but how do I get experience if I can’t get the job?

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“… Liverpool is famed for its nightlife, but I’m getting the impression it could do with some help. … In December 2023, the ECHO spoke to people in Liverpool’s late-night economy, and the prevailing view was it had become a struggle. … Prices don’t help—drinks and tickets are more expensive than they’ve ever been, but venues are stuck in a Catch-22 situation, caught between having to cover huge operating costs and wanting to get people through the doors.” — Dan Haygarth, The Liverpool Echo (Liverpool, England), 23 Aug. 2025

Catch-22 originated as the title of a 1961 novel by Joseph Heller. (Heller had originally planned to title his novel Catch-18, but the publication of Leon Uris’s Mila 18 persuaded him to change the number.) The catch-22 in Catch-22 involves a mysterious Army Air Forces regulation which asserts that a man is considered mentally unsound if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions but that if he makes the necessary formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. Catch-22 soon entered the language as a label for any irrational, circular, and impossible situation.