beard the lion in his den
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To confront or challenge someone in their own territory
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
đối đầu hoặc thách thức ai đó trên lãnh địa của họ
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: to approach a lion in its lair
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Bearding the lion in his den just to ask about some knitting was a bad idea.
You couldn't beard the lion in his den if you let your fears get the best of you.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “beard the lion in his den” mean?
To confront or challenge someone in their own territory Literally: to approach a lion in its lair
Is “beard the lion in his den” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.