Language: en
Meaning: (idiomatic)To do something that has ariskofgoingcatastrophicallywrong.Climbing so close to an erupting volcano wastickling the dragon's tail.; (idiomatic)Toannoyanirritableperson.Don't tell him the headline's misprinted; you don't want totickle the dragon's tail.; (nuclear physics)To bring twosubcriticalmassesclose togetherin order tofindtheedgeofcriticality.The laboratory headtickles the dragon's tailwhenever we have guests as a show of machismo.1957, Jim Harman, “Break a Leg”, inGalaxy Magazine, volume 6, numbers1-6, page130:Every real boy likes totickle 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 pencil1993, James Erwin Schevill,5 Plays 5, page52:PHYSICIST SLOTIN (manipulating the two hemispheres of the bomb at a table): Come closer. Watch metickle the Dragon's tail1995, George Robert Caron, Charlotte E. Meares,Fire of a Thousand Suns: The George R. "Bob" Caron Story, page219:And so it happened that Japan and the United States had alsotickled the dragon's tail. The two subcritical masses called pride and cultural misunderstanding had been shoved together into one critical mass.2003, Jonathan P. Binstock, Jim Sanborn,Atomic Time: Pure Science and Seduction, page13: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
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