bell the cat

1. 1.

   take a risk; perform a daring act

   “Who is going to bell the cat?”

   Broaderrisk

Questions about bell the cat

What does bell the cat mean?

bell the cat means "take a risk; perform a daring act".

Is bell the cat a common word?

bell the cat is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.