Meaning
Something that reliably provokes anger, indignation, or an aggressive reaction from a person or group. Chiefly British; American English tends to prefer 'red flag' in the same frame. Typically predicative, characterizing a provocation rather than naming the anger itself. Informal to neutral, vividly colourful register, common in journalism and everyday speech. Regional use: British English.
Origin
'Red rag' was 17th-century slang for the tongue, in print by 1605 and still in Francis Grose's 1785 dictionary. Waving a red cloth to distract or provoke animals is documented from the early 1700s, beginning not with bulls but with pheasants and turkey-cocks (The Independent Whig, 1721; Cato's Letters, 1724), then vipers (1809). Bulls arrive late: the earliest pairing traced by Word Histories is Tait's Edinburgh Magazine of March 1836 ('they catch wimmin's eyes like a red rag to a bull'), while Phrase Finder's earliest bull citation is Charlotte Yonge's Pillars of the House (1873). The imagery evokes the matador's cloth rather than bull-baiting, and the premise is zoologically shaky: bulls cannot distinguish red, and it is the movement of the cloth that provokes them.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- like a red flag to a bull
- red rag to the bull
Usage Examples
- Mentioning the parking reform at the residents' meeting was like a red rag to a bull; the shouting started within a minute.
- For a critic of monopoly power, that merger announcement was a red rag to a bull.
- He knows that questioning the coach's tactics is a red rag to a bull, so he saves his objections for private conversations.