bend someone's ear

Example: “My neighbor bent my ear for an hour about his new lawnmower.”

Origin: The agency in this phrase has quietly reversed. The older English use of bending an ear belonged to the listener: to bend an ear toward a speaker was to incline the head deliberately in order to catch what was being said, a gesture of willing attention, and it survives in the request to lend or bend an ear. The modern idiom hands the verb to the talker instead, so the ear is now bent by someone else — done to the listener rather than by them — and with that shift comes the whole complaint the phrase carries. Having your ear bent is not a conversation you joined but one you were subjected to, and the implication is that the speaker has continued well past the point where any willing inclination gave out.