Word.ws English Dictionary

ride the tiger

ride the tiger verb: to maintain control over something aggressive and dangerous.

Verb

ride the tiger (third-person singular simple present rides the tiger, present participle riding the tiger, simple past rode the tiger, past participle ridden the tiger)

  1. (idiomatic) To maintain control over something aggressive and dangerous.
    • The Germans had ridden the tiger of Islamic rage and resentment a long way – across the Red Sea into Eritrea and Somalia, into the inner sanctum of the Arabian desert, then winding through Mesopotamia, Persia and Afghanistan […]2012, Sean McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express, page 258
    • He has ridden the tiger with some skill. But the tiger is growing up slowly and Cambodia will find it more and more difficult to follow Communist policies abroad while keeping Communism down at home.2014, Nicholas Tarling, Britain and Sihanouk's Cambodia, page 41

Forms of ride the tiger

third-person singular presentrides the tiger
present participleriding the tiger
pastrode the tiger
past participleridden the tiger

Questions about ride the tiger

What does ride the tiger mean?
Ride the tiger means to maintain control over something aggressive and dangerous.
What part of speech is ride the tiger?
Ride the tiger is a verb.
What is the past tense of ride the tiger?
The past tense of ride the tiger is rode the tiger.

Words near ride the tiger in the dictionary

  1. ride the rail
  2. ride the rails
  3. ride the rods
  4. ride the short bus
  5. ride the three-legged mare
  6. ride the tiger
  7. ride the wave
  8. ride to hounds
  9. ride up
  10. ride up on
  11. ride ups

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ride the tiger (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:

Cite this entry: “ride the tiger.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ride_the_tiger. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.