"sow dragon's teeth" meaning in English

See sow dragon's teeth in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: sows dragon's teeth [present, singular, third-person], sowing dragon's teeth [participle, present], sowed dragon's teeth [past], sown dragon's teeth [participle, past], sowed dragon's teeth [participle, past]
Etymology: Derives from the ancient Greek myth where Jason sowed the teeth of a dragon into a field, from which they sprouted into an army of warriors. See also Ancient Greek ὀδόντες (του) δρᾰ́κοντος (odóntes (tou) drákontos, “dragon's teeth”) and Σπαρτοί (Spartoí, “sown [men]”) from σπείρω (speírō, “to sow”).⁽ʷᵖ⁾ Etymology templates: {{cog|grc|ὀδόντες (του) δρᾰ́κοντος||dragon's teeth}} Ancient Greek ὀδόντες (του) δρᾰ́κοντος (odóntes (tou) drákontos, “dragon's teeth”), {{m|grc|σπαρτοί|Σπαρτοί|sown 􂀿men􂁀}} Σπαρτοί (Spartoí, “sown [men]”), {{m|grc|σπείρω||to sow}} σπείρω (speírō, “to sow”) Head templates: {{en-verb|sows dragon's teeth|sowing dragon's teeth|sowed dragon's teeth|sown dragon's teeth|past_ptc2=sowed dragon's teeth}} sow dragon's teeth (third-person singular simple present sows dragon's teeth, present participle sowing dragon's teeth, simple past sowed dragon's teeth, past participle sown dragon's teeth or sowed dragon's teeth)
  1. (idiomatic) To perform an action that inadvertently leads to trouble. Tags: idiomatic Translations (Translations): dentes draconis serere (Latin)
    Sense id: en-sow_dragon's_teeth-en-verb-2bxkeHkN Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 52 48 Disambiguation of 'Translations': 83 17
  2. (idiomatic) To perform an action that is intended to prevent trouble, but which may actually bring it about. Tags: idiomatic Related terms: open Pandora's box, reap what one sows, sow the wind, reap the whirlwind
    Sense id: en-sow_dragon's_teeth-en-verb-~XvEgC04 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 52 48

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for sow dragon's teeth meaning in English (3.6kB)

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        "(idiomatic) To perform an action that inadvertently leads to trouble."
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        "(idiomatic) To perform an action that inadvertently leads to trouble."
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        "(idiomatic) To perform an action that is intended to prevent trouble, but which may actually bring it about."
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      "code": "la",
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      "word": "dentes draconis serere"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.