set by the ears

present singular third person sets by the ears · participle present setting by the ears · alternative set together by the ears · alternative set by the ears together

1. idiomatictransitiveTo make (a person or persons) argue; to set quarrelling.

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

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

   5 more examples

   [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.

   1623, John Chamberlain, The Works of Francis Bacon, volume 14, Cambridge University Press, published 2011, →ISBN, page 430

   Then she used to carry tales and stories from one to another, till she had set the whole neighbourhood 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

   In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears.

   1776, Thomas Paine, Common Sense

   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.

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

   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 […].

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