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Fine Dictionary

Flutter the dovecots

Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
  1. Flutter the dovecots
    to disturb commonplace, conventional people, as the eagle would a dovecot (see Shak., Cor. V. vi. 115)
Idioms

Flutter the dovecotes - (UK) Something that flutters the dovecots causes alarm or excitement.

Etymology

Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary A.S. dufe in dúfe-doppa; Ger. taube.

Usage in literature

And with it I could flutter the butterflies in old man Mangum's dovecot, too. "Options" by O. Henry

New generations had grown up since the name of Audley Egerton had first fluttered the dovecotes in that Corioli. "My Novel, Complete" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

When it miscarried a flutter was caused in the dovecotes of the illuminated. "The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference" by Emile Joseph Dillon

We'll flutter the Philistine dovecots. "The Loom of Youth" by Alec Waugh

When the announcement appeared in print there was much fluttering among the Mayfair dovecotes. "The Magnificent Montez" by Horace Wyndham

He would see those self-same sportsmen converted into the target, the flutterers of the dovecot themselves in a flutter. "Modern Women and What is Said of Them" by Anonymous

When I go into that yard, the pigeons from your dovecot flutter at my feet. "Shirley" by Charlotte Brontë

The information caused a flutter in the official dovecots. "British Secret Service During the Great War" by Nicholas Everitt