sow dragon's teeth
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.91 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
4
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To perform an action that inadvertently leads to trouble.
Example Sentences
- "The dragon's teeth are sown, Baby Charles; I pray God they bearna their armed harvest in your day, if I suld^([sic]) not live to see it. God forbid I should, for there will be an awful day's kemping at the shearing of them."
- "[…] as if the dragon’s teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore."
- "But you don't sow dragon's teeth. Not unless you want to get right down there with Frank Dodd in his hooded vinyl raincoat. With the Oswalds and the Sirhans and the Bremmers. Crazies of the world, unite."
Etymology
Derives from the ancient Greek myth where Jason sowed the teeth of a dragon into a field, from which they sprouted into an army of warriors. See also Ancient Greek ὀδόντες (του) δρᾰ́κοντος (odóntes (tou) drắkontos, “dragon's teeth”) and Σπαρτοί (Spartoí, “sown [men]”) from σπείρω (speírō, “to sow”).⁽ʷᵖ⁾