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tickle the dragon's tail

To annoy an irritable person.

Etymology:

  • From the obvious risk of tickling a dragon's tail. In physics, it was first used by Richard Feynman to describe the experiments of Louis Slotin at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
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Don't tell him the headline's misprinted; you don't want to tickle the dragon's tail.

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Submitted on July 10, 2018

Additional definitions for 'tickle the dragon's tail':

tickle the dragon's tailTo do something that has a risk of going catastrophically wrong.
tickle the dragon's tailTo bring two subcritical masses close together in order to find the edge of criticality.
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Translation

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kitzle den Schwanz des Drachen

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Nearby phrases

Some more phrases from our dictionary similar to tickle the dragon's tail

tickle someone's pickletickle pinkwhale tailpiece of tailtickle someone's pickletail between one's legstickle someone's fancytickle somebody's funny boneslap and tickleTickle the IvoriesTickle Your Funny Boneturn tailtake a tiger by the tailtickle the ivory

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    "tickle the dragon's tail." Phrases.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 22 Dec. 2024. <https://www.phrases.com/phrase/tickle-the-dragons-tail_26705>.

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