Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English homepage

Date: 1900-2000
Origin: Catch-22 book (1961) by Joseph Heller in which such situations are described

Catch-22

 noun
     
Catch-22 [uncountable]
an impossible situation that you cannot solve because you need to do one thing in order to do a second thing, but you cannot do the second thing until you have done the first:
It's a Catch-22 situation - without experience you can't get a job and without a job you can't get experience.
Definition from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

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