set by the ears

Alternative forms

• (obsolete) set together by the ears (see quots. 1623, 1712)

Verb

set by the ears

1. (transitive, idiomatic) To make (a person or persons) argue; to set quarrelling.
   • 1623, John Chamberlain in The Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 14, Cambridge University Press (2011), →ISBN, page 430:

     [The patrimony of the King's children] was not to be recovered but by […] a bloody and uncertain war, and setting all Christendom together by the ears.

   • 1712, John Arbuthnot, “The History of John Bull”, in George A. Aitken, The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot, Clarendon Press (1892), page 225:

     Then she used to carry tales and stories from one to another, till she had set the whole neighbourhood together by the ears; […]

   • 1862, “The Simonides Controversy”, in K. Simonides, The Periplus of Hannon, Trübner & Co. (1864), page 42:

     never did any man possess in so extraordinary a degree the faculty of setting people by the ears, of provoking dissension, and of creating strife.

   • 1913, Fairfax Cartwright, in T. G. Otte, July Crisis, Cambridge University Press (2014), →ISBN, page 140:

     Servia will some day set Europe by the ears and bring about a universal war on the Continent, […]

   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society 2012, p. 155:

     Even the best-intentioned minister could set a parish by the ears, so a single-minded insistence on the elimination of a vice could make him a figure of terror rather than an approachable counsellor […].

Related terms

• (obsolete) fall together by the ears