Word.ws English Dictionary

poking the bear

poking the bear is the present participle and gerund 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 poking the bear

What is poking the bear the present participle and gerund of?
Poking the bear is the present participle and gerund of poke the bear.

Words near poking the bear in the dictionary

  1. poking mullock
  2. poking one's fun
  3. poking one's nose into
  4. poking out
  5. poking someone's eye out
  6. poking the bear
  7. poking-stick
  8. poking-sticks
  9. pokingly
  10. pokings
  11. pokkah boeng

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: poking 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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Cite this entry: “poking the bear.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/poking_the_bear. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.