set by the ears

English

Alternative forms

• (obsolete) set together by the ears (see quots. 1623, 1712)

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Verb

set by the ears (third-person singular simple present sets by the ears, present participle setting by the ears, simple past and past participle set by the ears)

1. (transitive, idiomatic) To make (a person or persons) argue; to set quarrelling.
   • 1623, John Chamberlain, The Works of Francis Bacon, volume 14, Cambridge University Press, published 2011, →ISBN, page 430:

     [The patrimony of the King's children] was not to be recovered but by […] a bloody and uncertain war, and setting all Christendom together by the ears.

   • 1712, John Arbuthnot, “The History of John Bull”, in George A. Aitken, The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot, Clarendon Press (1892), page 225:

     Then she used to carry tales and stories from one to another, till she had set the whole neighbourhood together by the ears; […]

   • 1862, “The Simonides Controversy”, in K. Simonides, The Periplus of Hannon, Trübner & Co. (1864), page 42:

     never did any man possess in so extraordinary a degree the faculty of setting people by the ears, of provoking dissension, and of creating strife.

   • 1913, Fairfax Cartwright, in T. G. Otte, July Crisis, Cambridge University Press (2014), →ISBN, page 140:

     Servia will some day set Europe by the ears and bring about a universal war on the Continent, […]

   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 155:

     Even the best-intentioned minister could set a parish by the ears, so a single-minded insistence on the elimination of a vice could make him a figure of terror rather than an approachable counsellor […].

See also

• by the ears