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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

tail wagging the dogtail between one's legswhale tailslap and tickleTickle the Ivoriesmake head or tail ofTickle Your Funny Bonetickle the ivorypiece of tailtickle someone's fancytail offtickle someone's funny bonetickle someone's pickletail away

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    "tickle the dragon's tail." Phrases.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 Dec. 2024. <https://www.phrases.com/phrase/tickle-the-dragons-tail_26705>.

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