First recorded in 1580–90; bear 2, bait (in the sense “to set dogs upon for sport”), -ing 1 ( def. )
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
A similar ban on bear baiting, enacted in 2015 during the Obama administration, was rescinded by the 2020 rule, the park service said.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 6, 2023
She was cited for bear baiting, a charge that is still pending.
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 26, 2018
Greyhound racing in Australia's most populous state is set to go the way of bear baiting and cock fighting - a sport deemed by authorities simply too distasteful to continue.
From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2016
Ten U.S. states currently allow bear baiting, according to Humane Society data.
From Reuters ● May 27, 2014
Hunting, bear baiting, fireworks, tilting, Morris dances, a rustic marriage, a fight between Danes and English, curious aquatic sports,—all succeeded each other, interspersed with brilliant feasts.
From A History of English Prose Fiction by Tuckerman, Bayard
The agency determined then that bear-baiting was biologically unsound, potentially unsafe and “inconsistent with federal law authorizing sport hunting in national preserves in Alaska.”
From Reuters ● May 21, 2018
Environmental groups immediately assailed the proposal, saying bear-baiting and other hunting and trapping practices the measure would permit are inhumane and disruptive to the natural predator-prey dynamic in Alaska’s preserves.
From Reuters ● May 21, 2018
Maine voters will decide whether to ban bear-baiting and using dogs to hunt bears.
From New York Times ● Oct. 30, 2014
With bear-baiting now illegal, the plucking and basting of turkeys is one of the few public rituals of catharsis we have, in an age of $150m marketing campaigns and Happy Meal burger tie-ins.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 20, 2013
"If you had lived in them, you would have belonged to Paris Garden, or the bull-baiting and bear-baiting houses in Southwark," replied Old Parr.
From Auriol or, The Elixir of Life by Ainsworth, W. Harrison
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
