Word.ws English Dictionary

poked the bear

poked the bear is the simple past and past participle of poke the bear.

Meaning of poke the bear

Verb

poke the bear (third-person singular simple present pokes the bear, present participle poking the bear, simple past and past participle poked the bear)

  1. (US, idiomatic) To deliberately aggravate somebody, especially somebody in a position of power or authority.
    • Throughout my training I witnessed several doctors run out of town because their honesty and outspokenness began to poke the bear.2012, Marty Makary, Unaccountable, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, →ISBN, page 17
  2. (idiomatic, slang) To deliberately anger Russia or the Russian government.

Questions about poked the bear

What is poked the bear the simple past and past participle of?
Poked the bear is the simple past and past participle of poke the bear.

Words near poked the bear in the dictionary

  1. poked mullock
  2. poked one's fun
  3. poked one's nose into
  4. poked out
  5. poked someone's eye out
  6. poked the bear
  7. pokeful
  8. pokefuls
  9. pokegirl
  10. pokegirls
  11. pokelogan

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: poked the bear (page history and authors); poke the bear (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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