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Catch-22

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.04 sec.

A paradoxical situation that has no happy ending. A popular movie with Alan Arkin in 1970, Catch-22 came from Joseph Heller's 1961 comical, yet gruesome, best-selling book about pilots in a fictitious World War II setting. The paradox was that no sane pilot would be crazy enough to want to continue flying dangerous missions. The only way a pilot would be grounded is if he were truly crazy, but if he asked to be grounded, he was then considered sane and would not be grounded.

A Catch-22 with software would be trying to install a new version of the OS that conflicts with the current display driver. Although a new version of the display driver may be available for the new version of the OS, the current display driver does not allow the new OS to be installed. Sometimes, a Catch-22 is used synonymously with a "chicken-egg" dilemma (which comes first?), but it is more accurately a conundrum without a winning solution.

Catch-22
concerned with the frustration of red-tape mechanisms. [Am. Lit.: Catch-22]
See : Bureaucracy
Catch-22
Air Force captain’s appeal to be grounded for insanity not granted because desire to avoid combat proves sanity. [Am. Lit.: Joseph Heller Catch-22]
See : Frustration
Catch-22
pleading insanity to leave army indicates sanity. [Am. Lit.: Catch-22]
See : Irony
Catch-22
claim of insanity to be relieved of military duty proves sanity. [Am. Lit.: Joseph Heller Catch-22]
See : Paradox
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The Bush administration's reasoning is founded on a twisted form of Catch-22 logic.
America's increasing democracy deficit by Hill, Steven / The Humanist
Gerard Thomas describes well the Catch-22 that many priests will face when Rome releases its statement on gay clergy.
Hardworking & faithful by Hall, Howard / Commonweal
The latter, once described as Catch-22 with stethoscopes, employed dark humor to mount a devastating indictment of the way physicians were trained in the 1970s.
Prot U by Bentz, Lenore Thomson / Reviewer's Bookwatch
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