See poke the bear in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "The second sense refers to the use of bears to represent Russia, as a shortening of the idiom \"poke the Russian bear\" (to anger or threaten Russia and start a war with Russia).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "pokes the bear",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "poking the bear",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "poked the bear",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "poked the bear",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "*"
},
"expansion": "poke the bear (third-person singular simple present pokes the bear, present participle poking the bear, simple past and past participle poked the bear)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"related": [
{
"_dis1": "0 0",
"word": "bearbaiting"
},
{
"_dis1": "0 0",
"word": "ruffle some feathers"
},
{
"_dis1": "0 0",
"word": "when you mess with the bull, you get the horns"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "American English",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"_dis": "87 13",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "80 20",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
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{
"_dis": "87 13",
"kind": "other",
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"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2012, Marty Makary, Unaccountable, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, →ISBN, page 17:",
"text": "Throughout my training I witnessed several doctors run out of town because their honesty and outspokenness began to poke the bear.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2020 October 12, Andrew Marantz, “Why Facebook Can’t Fix Itself”, in The New Yorker:",
"text": "His advice to Zuckerberg, the Times later reported, was “Don’t poke the bear”—avoid incurring the wrath of Trump and his supporters.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To deliberately aggravate somebody, especially somebody in a position of power or authority."
],
"id": "en-poke_the_bear-en-verb-bTLyCSKp",
"links": [
[
"aggravate",
"aggravate"
],
[
"power",
"power"
],
[
"authority",
"authority"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(US, idiomatic) To deliberately aggravate somebody, especially somebody in a position of power or authority."
],
"tags": [
"US",
"idiomatic"
]
},
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "2 98",
"kind": "place",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Russia",
"orig": "en:Russia",
"parents": [
"Asia",
"Europe",
"Earth",
"Eurasia",
"Nature",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "0 100",
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Russian politics",
"orig": "en:Russian politics",
"parents": [
"Politics",
"Russia",
"Society",
"Asia",
"Europe",
"All topics",
"Earth",
"Eurasia",
"Fundamental",
"Nature"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To deliberately anger Russia or the Russian government."
],
"id": "en-poke_the_bear-en-verb-P9pt81Fj",
"links": [
[
"deliberately",
"deliberately"
],
[
"anger",
"anger"
],
[
"Russia",
"Russia"
],
[
"Russian",
"Russian"
],
[
"government",
"government"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(slang, idiomatic) To deliberately anger Russia or the Russian government."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic",
"slang"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
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"word": "poke the bear"
}
{
"categories": [
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"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English verbs",
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"Pages with entries",
"en:Russia",
"en:Russian politics"
],
"etymology_text": "The second sense refers to the use of bears to represent Russia, as a shortening of the idiom \"poke the Russian bear\" (to anger or threaten Russia and start a war with Russia).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "pokes the bear",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "poking the bear",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "poked the bear",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "poked the bear",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "*"
},
"expansion": "poke the bear (third-person singular simple present pokes the bear, present participle poking the bear, simple past and past participle poked the bear)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"related": [
{
"word": "bearbaiting"
},
{
"word": "ruffle some feathers"
},
{
"word": "when you mess with the bull, you get the horns"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"American English",
"English idioms",
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2012, Marty Makary, Unaccountable, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, →ISBN, page 17:",
"text": "Throughout my training I witnessed several doctors run out of town because their honesty and outspokenness began to poke the bear.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2020 October 12, Andrew Marantz, “Why Facebook Can’t Fix Itself”, in The New Yorker:",
"text": "His advice to Zuckerberg, the Times later reported, was “Don’t poke the bear”—avoid incurring the wrath of Trump and his supporters.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To deliberately aggravate somebody, especially somebody in a position of power or authority."
],
"links": [
[
"aggravate",
"aggravate"
],
[
"power",
"power"
],
[
"authority",
"authority"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(US, idiomatic) To deliberately aggravate somebody, especially somebody in a position of power or authority."
],
"tags": [
"US",
"idiomatic"
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English idioms",
"English slang"
],
"glosses": [
"To deliberately anger Russia or the Russian government."
],
"links": [
[
"deliberately",
"deliberately"
],
[
"anger",
"anger"
],
[
"Russia",
"Russia"
],
[
"Russian",
"Russian"
],
[
"government",
"government"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(slang, idiomatic) To deliberately anger Russia or the Russian government."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic",
"slang"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
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}
],
"word": "poke the bear"
}
Download raw JSONL data for poke the bear meaning in English (2.9kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.