MEANING
To undertake a dangerous or difficult task that would benefit the group you belong to.
Use it for
asking who will confront a shared danger; describing someone taking a risk for colleagues; distinguishing proposing a solution from carrying it out; showing reluctance to challenge a powerful personIdentifies the person who takes a risky action needed by a wider group. Writing functions: Risk for a group.
Words that belong together
- who will bell the cat
- someone has to bell the cat
On the page
Everyone agreed that the director had to be challenged, but no one volunteered to bell the cat.
A junior researcher finally belled the cat by asking who had approved the missing consent forms.
Word forms
- Base
- bell the cat
Usage notes
Verbal idiom: bell/bells/belled/belling the cat. Common in questions about who will undertake a dangerous task. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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