chicken or egg
Which came first?
The chicken or egg, short for "which came first, the chicken or the egg," refers to a causality dilemma where two things each seem to require the other to exist first.
The phrase describes any circular dependency or unanswerable question about origins: It's a chicken-or-egg problem—you need experience to get hired, but you need to get hired to gain experience.
- originsPoints where things start
- hatchingEmergence from an egg
- sequenceOrdered succession of elements
- dilemmaForced choice between undesirables
- questionRequest for information
paradox · self-reference · feedback loop · infinite regress · puzzle · causation · first principles · interdependence · nature vs nurture · analogs · evolution · thought experiment · development · conundrum · process · idiom · cyclicality · cycle
- paradoxescatch-22, Zeno's paradox, Zeno's paradoxes, causal loop, bootstrap paradox
- philosophy questionsthought experiments, hypotheticals, trolley problem, ship of Theseus, philosophical questions
- trick questionstrick questions, brain tricks, mind games
chicken or eggfirst cause
Initial triggering factor
prime mover · unmoved mover · genesis · origin point · root cause
chicken or eggno-brainer
Self-evident decision
foregone conclusion · cut and dried · black and white · slam dunk · known quantity
chicken or eggslam dunk
Forceful basket from above
smoking gun · plain as day · black and white · case closed · QED