Citations:set by the ears

Verb

 * 1) * 1623, John Chamberlain in The Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 14, Cambridge University Press (2011), ISBN 9781108040778, 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.
 * 1) * 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; […]
 * 1) * 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.
 * 1) * 1913, Fairfax Cartwright, in T. G. Otte, July Crisis, Cambridge University Press (2014), ISBN 9781107064904, page 140:
 * Servia will some day set Europe by the ears and bring about a universal war on the Continent, […]
 * 1) * 1923, Winifred Holtby, Anderby Wold:
 * ‘But it must make it a little uncomfortable for every one if she will set the village by the ears.’
 * 1) * 1971,, 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 […].