taste blood

present singular third person tastes blood · participle present tasting blood · participle past tasted blood · past tasted blood

1. figurativelyTo sense weakness in another, encouraging one to attack.

   But having tasted blood on the issue, the Obama campaign kept jabbing away.

   2012 July 14, Matt Williams, Ewen MacAskill, “Obama repeats attack on Romney as 'pioneer of outsourcing'”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 08 Jun 2018

   1 more example

   […] in those few moments I had proved myself a cyclist of such enormous cool, such dazzling technique, that I knew I would never again slow down for an advancing truck, veer to avoid a threatening limousine, or hesitate to plunge into the midst of a pedestrian phalanx. I had tasted blood, and now I knew what all those pillar-legged hostelers felt as they sat around their campfires, recalling the encounters and skirmishes of the day.

   1968 January 28, Henry S. Resnik, “Passion on a Bicycle”, in The Atlantic, →ISSN, archived from the original on 06 Dec 2022

2. figurativelyTo press home an advantage in a debate, etc.
3. broadlyfigurativelyTo take pleasure in something new.