内卷 (nèi juǎn) means involution; in contemporary social usage, an increasingly competitive rat race.
Dictionary reading and meanings#
nèi juǎn: (embryology) to involute; involution; (neologism, attested by 2017) (of a society) to become more and more of a rat race; to become increasingly competitive (due to limited resources)
Reading the pinyin#
The spelling above follows the dictionary headword reading. It is a citation form, rather than a recording of a particular speaker. A written gloss is not a complete rule for choosing a word in every sentence.
Does this word always have one English translation?#
Use the listed sense that fits the sentence. Where the dictionary gives more than one reading or meaning, they are shown above rather than collapsed into a single universal translation.
Sources and lexical-data licence#
Lexical data adapted from CC-CEDICT contributors, distributed by MDBG, release dated 23 October 2026. English glosses have been shortened or reformatted here. This adapted lexical data is provided under CC BY-SA 4.0. The explanatory prose is newly written.