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tickle the dragon's tail

To do something that has a risk of going catastrophically wrong.

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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Climbing so close to an erupting volcano was tickling 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 annoy an irritable person.
tickle the dragon's tailTo bring two subcritical masses close together in order to find the edge of criticality.
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Nearby phrases

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

tickle someone's picklewhale tailtickle someone's funny bonetickle the ivoriesmake head or tail oftickle someone's pickleTickle the Ivorieswhale tailtail offturn tailtail awaytickle the ivoriespiece of tailtickle the twine

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    "tickle the dragon's tail." Phrases.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <https://www.phrases.com/phrase/tickle-the-dragons-tail_26704>.

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