raise someone's hackles

present singular third person raises someone's hackles · participle present raising someone's hackles · participle past raised someone's hackles · past raised someone's hackles

1. idiomaticTo annoy or anger someone.

   Every time I hear him talk, he just raises my hackles.

   3 more examples

   Much as I admire Wilson’s tour de force—I wish people would read it more and read about it less—my hackles have always risen at the entirely false suggestion that his book influenced mine.

   1976, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Kindle edition, OUP Oxford, published 2016, page 429

   Google announced its breakthrough in a paper published in the science journal Nature. And its claims have raised the hackles of researchers at competing companies who believe the Silicon Valley giant is inflating its accomplishment.

   2019 October 23, David Yaffe-Bellany, “Quantum Computing Explained (in Mere Minutes!)”, in New York Times

   View the film now and it’s not hard to see what raised the hackles of such groups.

   2022 March 20, Jason Bailey, “‘Basic Instinct’ at 30: A Time Capsule That Can Still Offend”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Synonyms: aggravate, annoy, nettle, rankle, ruffle, sting, burn someone's ass, antagonize