Word.ws English Dictionary

stir up the animals

stir up the animals verb: to cause public discontent or controversy.

Verb

stir up the animals (third-person singular simple present stirs up the animals, present participle stirring up the animals, simple past and past participle stirred up the animals)

  1. To cause public discontent or controversy.
    • He styled himself both a Prohibition-flouting "Baltimoron" and "an incurable snob," the voice of "the intelligent minority" determined "to stir up the animals."2001, Richard P. Horwitz, The American Studies Anthology, page 50
    • The Japanese were often skittish about elections: they wanted to control who they got as top administrators and feared elections might stir up the animals.2013, Rupert Wilkinson, Surviving a Japanese Internment Camp

Forms of stir up the animals

third-person singular presentstirs up the animals
present participlestirring up the animals
past participlestirred up the animals
paststirred up the animals

Questions about stir up the animals

What does stir up the animals mean?
Stir up the animals means to cause public discontent or controversy.
What part of speech is stir up the animals?
Stir up the animals is a verb.
What is the past tense of stir up the animals?
The past tense of stir up the animals is stirred up the animals.

Words near stir up the animals in the dictionary

  1. stir someone's blood
  2. stir the embers
  3. stir the pot
  4. stir up
  5. stir up a hornets' nest
  6. stir up the animals
  7. stir-crazy
  8. stir-fried
  9. stir-fried ice cream
  10. stir-fried ice creams
  11. stir-fries

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stir up the animals (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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