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Reader question: Please explain “stuck in a rut”, as in this sentence: he felt like he was stuck in a rut, and just going through life and not living life. My comments: Here his life is likened to a wagon which travels in the same track day after day. It suggests that his life is routine but boring. He’s going through the motions, doing things by habit rather than, say, interest. In short, his life is not very exciting. The rut, you see, refers originally to the deep narrow track on the muddy road. Folks in the city are no longer familiar with what was called the rut roads, roads with deep ruts left in the soft ground by a wheel. Folks in the city are instead familiar with the paved roads which are smooth and even, the occasional pot holes notwithstanding. In the remote countryside, however, muddy roads still dominate and there, after the rain, the ground is softened and vehicles, or heavy wagons with thick tires pulled by horses preferably leave deep tracks behind them. These tracks are called ruts. A few days later, with the rain long gone and the earth dried up, the ruts are retained and vehicles continue to travel along these rutted lines. For one thing it is easy to go down the beaten track. For another, if your wagon or vehicle is small, it’s difficult for it to get out of the rut once it got stuck in it, stuck meaning fixed in a particular position and impossible to move (as in: “she tried to open the window but it was stuck”, or: “the bus got stuck in the snow”). | 
