Meaning:
To wave a red rag to a bull is to deliberately provoke it. More generally,
the expression denotes any deliberate action intended to bring about an
adverse reaction.
Background:
In the 17th century, to wave a red rag at someone was merely to chatter with
them - `red rag' was then a slang term for the tongue.
The waving of a cloth rag at an animal to distract it may have been a common
practice for centuries, but it wasn't until the 1700s that it was documented
in print. The animal in question wasn't, as we might suppose, a bull. The
first creature known to be susceptible to rag-waving was that most dim-witted
of birds, the pheasant. This was cited in Trenchard and Gordon's religious
essays, Cato's Letters, 1724:
Foxes are trapann'd [trapped] by Traces, Pheasants by a red Rag, and other
Birds by a Whistle; and the same is true of Mankind.
Next come vipers, which were also thought to be adversely affected by red
rags, as was recorded in The Times in March 1809:
"Truth to a lawyer was like a red rag to a viper - it extracted his venom."
Bulls come rather a long way down the list of red-rag-sensitive beings found
in early citations. Before them we find turkeys and, not to be left out,
Frenchmen - as in Catherine Gore's Memoires of a Peeress, 1837:
"They [the English] have no ardour for gratuitous quarrels; they do not
fire up like a turkey-cock or a Frenchman, at sight of a red rag."
It wasn't until 1873 that someone decided that bulls were to be added to the
list, when Charlotte Yonge included an allusion in the novel Pillars of the
House:
"Jack will do for himself if he tells Wilmet her eyes are violet; it is like
a red rag to a bull."
The inclusion of bulls on the list was rather misguided. Bulls don't have the
optical equipment to distinguish red from other colours, so the `red rag to a
bull' phrase gives the wrong impression. It is generally accepted that bulls
are enraged by the waving of the cloth rather than by its colour and that a
green rag would work just as well. Personally, I've never been close enough
to an annoyed bull for a double-blind trial, so to speak, and that's the way
I prefer to keep it.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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Waving a red rag to a bull is a vital skill for a provacteur. Gandhi must've
agreed who said the function of a civil resister is to provoke response. People,
especially those feeling insecure, fall for rage baits all the time.
Natural selection would work its magic, however, and over eons a breed of bulls
get it. Instead of charging at the rag, they pause, take a deep breath, flap their
ears as if waving off gnats, and stop taking it bovinely. Rags would freeze and
fall, like bullets in front of Neo in the Matrix, before these enlightened ruminants.
