Idiom
tickle the dragon's tail
Meaning
To do something that has a risk of going catastrophically wrong.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“He likes to tickle the dragon's tail by driving too fast.”
“By ignoring the safety warnings on the machine, you are really starting to tickle the dragon's tail.”
“The diplomat knew that making such a provocative statement during the peace talks was akin to tickling the dragon's tail, yet he proceeded regardless.”
Examples
simple
“He likes to tickle the dragon's tail by driving too fast.”
contextual
“By ignoring the safety warnings on the machine, you are really starting to tickle the dragon's tail.”
complex
“The diplomat knew that making such a provocative statement during the peace talks was akin to tickling the dragon's tail, yet he proceeded regardless.”
Origin
From the obvious risk of tickling a dragon's tail. In physics, it was coined by American physicist Richard Feynman to describe the experiments of Louis Slotin at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Key words
Related idioms
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