A: How can you get along with your neighbor the Johnsons? They are the most difficult people I know. B: I don’t rattle their cages and they don’t rattle mine. Note: If you rattle someone’s cage, you do or say something that upsets or annoys them. This informal saying involves a humorous comparison between the person annoyed in this way and a dangerous animal taunted by spectators outside its cage in the zoo. The idiom means to “purposefully anger, upset, or unnerve someone.” |