sow dragon's teeth

present singular third person sows dragon's teeth · participle present sowing dragon's teeth · past sowed dragon's teeth · participle past sown dragon's teeth · participle past sowed dragon's teeth

1. idiomaticTo perform an action that inadvertently leads to trouble.

   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.

   1979, Stephen King, The Dead Zone, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   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.

   1822 May 29, [Walter Scott], chapter XXVII, in The Fortunes of Nigel. […], volume III (in English), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., →OCLC, pages 100–101

   […] 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.

   1859, Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, book III (The Track of a Storm), page 183

2. idiomaticTo perform an action that is intended to prevent trouble, but which may actually bring it about.