the.com/fanning the flames
Helping a small fire realize its true destructive potential.
means To make a tense or bad situation worse, usually by adding provocation, gossip, or anger where you could have added nothing at all.
from A literal image before it was a figurative one: fan a fire and the extra oxygen feeds the flame, making it burn hotter and spread faster. People have used fire and burning as metaphors for conflict and passion for centuries, and 'fan the flames' settled into English as a stock phrase for stirring up anger, rumor, or unrest rather than calming it — the same physics, applied to tempers instead of timber.
- origin
- literal fire-tending, repurposed for human drama by 1700s
- irony
- fans are meant to cool things, not escalate them
- usage tell
- always said about someone else's bad behavior
- modern form
- retweeting an argument instead of walking away