cattle prod

• cattle-prod, cattleprod

cattle prod (plural cattle prods)

1. A stick designed to goad cows, steers, and similar animals in order to prompt them to move in a desired direction, now usually electrified to administer a stimulating shock to the animal.
2. (figuratively) Something used to goad or push someone to act.
   • 2023 July 10, James Poniewozik, “The Twitter Watch Party Is Over”, in The New York Times‎:

     Social media is only as virtuous as the people using it. With Donald J. Trump in office, using Twitter as a cattle prod to shock the country to attention multiple times a day — often over cultural topics like N.F.L. protests or “Roseanne” — there was a sense that every day on the site was a battle.

• cattle goad, stock prod

cattle prod (third-person singular simple present cattle prods, present participle cattle prodding, simple past and past participle cattle prodded)

1. (transitive, figuratively) To goad or push someone to act.

   (They cattle prodded people trying to get them to move, but to no avail.)

   (The website locks streams at highest resolution to cattle prod users to pay higher bandwidth fees.)

• “cattle prod”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.