sow dragon's teeth

English[edit]

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Dragon's teeth (mythology)

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)

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)

(idiomatic) To perform an action that inadvertently leads to trouble.
- 1822 May 29, [Walter Scott], chapter XXVII, in The Fortunes of Nigel. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., →OCLC, pages 100–101:
  The dragon's teeth are sown, Baby Charles; I pray God they bearna their armed harvest in your day, if I suld^[sic] not live to see it. God forbid I should, for there will be an awful day's kemping at the shearing of them.
- 1859, Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, book III (The Track of a Storm), page 183:
  […] as if the dragon’s teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore.
- 1979, Stephen King, The Dead Zone, →ISBN:
  But you don't sow dragon's teeth. Not unless you want to get right down there with Frank Dodd in his hooded vinyl raincoat. With the Oswalds and the Sirhans and the Bremmers. Crazies of the world, unite.
(idiomatic) To perform an action that is intended to prevent trouble, but which may actually bring it about.

Translations