Meaning of tickle the dragon's tail | Babel Free

Definitions

1. To do something that has a risk of going catastrophically wrong.
   idiomatic
2. To annoy an irritable person.
   idiomatic
3. To bring two subcritical masses close together in order to find the edge of criticality.

Examples

“Climbing so close to an erupting volcano was tickling the dragon's tail.”

“Don't tell him the headline's misprinted; you don't want to tickle the dragon's tail.”

“The laboratory head tickles the dragon's tail whenever we have guests as a show of machismo.”

“Every real boy likes to tickle the dragon's tail. Maybe I was a little old for it, but that's what I was doing there in the Moran III jungle. I got the shield off my cigarette lighter and jerked out the dinky little damper rods for the pile and started easing the two little bricks toward each other with the point of my lead pencil”

“PHYSICIST SLOTIN (manipulating the two hemispheres of the bomb at a table): Come closer. Watch me tickle the Dragon's tail”

“And so it happened that Japan and the United States had also tickled the dragon's tail. The two subcritical masses called pride and cultural misunderstanding had been shoved together into one critical mass.”

“Were this assembly functional, a person might manipulate the bricks of the radiant castlelike structure to slow down the neutrons, to "tickle the dragon's tail," as Morland writes”

CEFR level