show one's claws

Verb

show one's claws (third-person singular simple present shows one's claws, present participle showing one's claws, simple past showed one's claws, past participle shown one's claws)

1. To demonstrate one's ability to hurt another.
   • In this event he really showed his claws by winning ten games, drawing four while losing four.1949, Chess Review - Volume 17, page 7
   • Perhaps if I'd been dressed in conventional clothes and carried a suitcase they would have been more sure of themselves, but right up until the time that I reached my final destination, a transit camp outside Liverpool, I was handled with kid gloves, as if they suspected my present tractability...2013, Gwen Moffat, Space Below My Feet
2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see show, claw.