Meaning
A place or situation perceived as dangerous, hostile, or intimidating, especially one that a person must enter or face despite the risk, such as a tense meeting with powerful opponents or a hostile audience. Typically used with verbs of entering or being sent in. Common in both serious and lightly humorous contexts. Neutral to dramatic in register, and often half-humorous when applied to meetings, interviews, or family gatherings. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The image comes from the Bible: in Daniel 6, the prophet is cast into a den of lions at the order of Darius the Mede and preserved because he is found blameless. Scholars date the tales of Daniel chapters 1-6 to between the Persian period and the mid-2nd century BC. A classical parallel, the runaway slave Androcles sheltering in a lion's den (earliest in Aulus Gellius, 2nd century AD, later attached to Aesop), reinforced the scene. In English, the related fixed phrase 'beard the lion in his den' is documented from Tobias Smollett's The Regicide (1749) in short form, with Walter Scott's Marmion (1808) supplying the full wording and independent uses by 1817. Citation collections show the bare noun phrase used figuratively by the mid-19th century, as in Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1847-48): 'Mrs. Bowls cautioned her lodger against venturing into the lion's den.'
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- beard the lion in his den
- den of lions
- go into the lion's den
Usage Examples
- Steel yourself before the disciplinary hearing; you are walking into the lion's den.
- The junior analyst was sent, unarmed with data, into the lion's den of the board meeting.
- When I finally met my online critics in person, I discovered the lion's den was mostly full of reasonable people.