Citations:mouton enragé

Noun: a normally peaceful person who has become suddenly and uncharacteristically angry

 * 1826 — James S. Buckingham (e.d), "Summary of the latest intelligence from India and other countries of the East", The Oriental Herald and Journal of General Literature, vol. 9, p 343.
 * But our " mouton enragé " pursues a different course. He rushes blindfolded into a Burmese war, ana creeps with the utmost circumspection to the siege of Bhurtpore.
 * 1857 — George Gilfillan, Galleries of Literary Portraits
 * This mildness of tone comports with his character (a man of timid and gentle temper, foaming and thundering in the pulpit, may well remind us, as well as the French, of a mouton enragé), it points his sarcastic vein (how do a mild lip and tone acerbate a keen sneer!), and it is in keeping with his personal appearance.
 * 1896 — William Black, "Briseis", chapter V, Harper's Magazine, vol. XCII, p.231
 * And meanwhile young Gordon, who had been eying with a vague curiosity this mouton-enragé sort of creature, and who was not much interested in his shop-talk, had been inwardly saying to himself "My fat friend, it would do you a world of good if you were made to crawl six miles up the Corrieara burn with a rifle in your hand. And perhaps two or three days starvation wouldn't do you much harm either."
 * 1955 — John Oram Thomas, No banners: The Story of Alfred and Henry Newton, ch. 7
 * Many of them were peace-loving idealists who, like moutons enragés, had been literally goaded into ridding the earth of the Nazi pestilence.
 * 1965 — The Economist, January 23: 307/1
 * The most unenviable reputation as the moutons enragés of this Parliament.