raise someone's hackles
raise someone's hackles verb: to annoy or anger someone.
Verb
raise someone's hackles (third-person singular simple present raises someone's hackles, present participle raising someone's hackles, simple past and past participle raised someone's hackles)
- To annoy or anger someone.
- Every time I hear him talk, he just raises my hackles.
- Much as I admire Wilson’s tour de force—I wish people would read it more and read about it less—my hackles have always risen at the entirely false suggestion that his book influenced mine.1976, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Kindle edition, OUP Oxford, published 2016, page 429
- Synonyms:
- aggravate, annoy, nettle, rankle, ruffle, sting, burn someone's ass, antagonize, bother, disgruntle
Synonyms of raise someone's hackles
Forms of raise someone's hackles
| third-person singular present | raises someone's hackles |
|---|---|
| present participle | raising someone's hackles |
| past participle | raised someone's hackles |
| past | raised someone's hackles |
Questions about raise someone's hackles
- What does raise someone's hackles mean?
- Raise someone's hackles means to annoy or anger someone.
- What part of speech is raise someone's hackles?
- Raise someone's hackles is a verb.
- What is the past tense of raise someone's hackles?
- The past tense of raise someone's hackles is raised someone's hackles.
Words near raise someone's hackles in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: raise someone's hackles (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-raise someone's hackles.ogg.
Cite this entry: “raise someone's hackles.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/raise_someone%27s_hackles. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.