have a tiger by the tail
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to control something powerful and difficult to manage
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
kiểm soát một thứ gì đó mạnh mẽ và khó quản lý
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: holding a dangerous animal
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
‘ And if you push me down again,’ she warned quietly, ‘ you might very well find that you have a tiger by the tail.
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 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “have a tiger by the tail” mean?
to control something powerful and difficult to manage Literally: holding a dangerous animal
Is “have a tiger by the tail” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.