Spitting feathers means that you are thirsty- Not furious. Did you know that?

Question

Shooting yourself in the foot doesn't mean you've accidentally dropped yourself in it, it means a deliberate, self-inflicted wound

by a soldier to get out of being sent to the front line.

Answer 1

i did no that but what we normally say is my mouth is dryer than Gandhi's sandals.

it sounds weird theres another one but its racist and involve a facecloth.

xx

Answer 2

Meanings of words and phrases change all the time.  If someone today were dropped into Medieval England they would find themselves unable to understand the language, as everyone spoke Old English.  Try reading the original Canterbury Tales without a translation and it would be hard to make sense of it.  Even the language of a couple of hundred years ago is different now.

For example, 'gorgeous' originally meant full of blood and gore, not something beautiful.  If someone said that 'The sight of the Cathedral made me feel awful.', they were not commenting on dreadful architecture, they were saying it inspired a sense of wonder and awe.  Television has speeded up this process, as when a meaning changes, there are a lot of people who hear about it at the same time.

We should not get too pedantic about these things.  Time once was that you only had to travel 20 miles away from where you were born to find people used language slightly differently.  Even now, if you called a difficult lady a 'cow' in the South of England you wouldn't have been too insulting.  Do the same in Scotland however, and the reaction would be very different and probably violent, as it is considered deeply insulting there.  

Let's just all agree spitting feathers could mean either anger or thirst, and get on with more important things in life.

Answer 3

Indeed I did.

Did you know that you have used an inappropriate capital letter in your question? I ONLY mention this as it's completely unlike you.

Did you fail an audition today?

Answer 4

Spitting feathers?... what are you, a bird?

Answer 5

Wrong on both counts

Spitting feathers

It can mean both actually.

My reference works only list it in the sense of somebody being extremely agitated, most usually because they’re as angry as h**l (as a result of which they might instead be spitting blood, a phrase that’s clearly a close relative).

Spitting feathers became common in British slang in the nineties and these days often turns up in newspapers and books. An example from the politically and linguistically conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper for 28 February 2002 shows how it is used: “Edify is working on software which responds to the pitch and tone of a telephone caller’s voice so that, if a complainant is spitting feathers, they can be transferred to a human who can calm them down”. In recent years — as my Daily Telegraph example shows — it has been turning up in everywhere, though it seems to have a particular connection with TV, pop music and related fields and is more a favourite of the down-market tabloids than the broadsheets.

Several writers have put forward suggestions as to how such a phrase might have arisen. The image, they say, could be that of somebody so angry that they’re foaming at the mouth, spitting flecks of sputum, which might be compared to feathers. Tony Thorne, in his Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (1997) says firmly that the phrase instead refers to any “extreme enthusiasm or agitation”, that it “probably evokes the squawking of a frantic bird”, and that the image came from the armed forces.

All such suggestions were rendered suspect when I discovered from many comments by subscribers that the phrase has in fact long been known in the sense of being thirsty. Ruth Barlow wrote: “I’m from Lancashire (perhaps it makes a difference) and I only know this expression to mean very thirsty. It’s certainly older than 10-15 years, too — I’m rapidly heading to my 50s now and it was in common use when I was a small child in the early 1960s”. Jo Sidebottom agrees: “My mother (Cheshire by background) has used the expression I think for as long as I can remember (I’m in my forties) to mean very thirsty — usually for a ‘nice cup of tea’. When I read your comments, I wondered if she had been using it mistakenly, but I checked with my partner, whose parents are from Yorkshire, and without any prompting from me he gave exactly the same answer: it means very thirsty or parched and it’s been around for at least several decades. Maybe it’s a northern expression which only caught on in the south or nationwide more recently (possibly from a soap opera?) but the meaning was misunderstood?“

This seems very likely. It seems improbable that two identical expressions arose with such different meanings. People heard it who didn’t know its true meaning, made a false association with spitting blood, and changed the sense.

Where it came from is suggested by Charles Wilson, whose childhood was spent in the southern USA: “I have often heard the expression, ‘I’m so thirsty I feel like I have a mouthful of feathers’, which strikes me as wonderfully descriptive”. Alice Battles and Joel Showalter mentioned “spitting cotton”, another way of expressing dryness once common in the American south, which is clearly a related idea. ♥

Shoot yourself in the foot

To do or say something stupid which causes problems for you.  ÃƒÂ¢Ã‚™Â¥

Answer 6

Yes but spitting mad refers to things like venomous snakes and cats behavior.  Spitting feathers... never heard of it.

Answer 7

Yes I did. Another one for being thirsty is 'my mouth is as dry as Gandy's flip flop'! :o)

Answer 8

That's how I would use it regarding the feathers. Origins for these things are a bit oblique- I always assumed the shooting yourself in the foot was a wild west term for firing the gun before drawing it from the holster.

Did you know that 'freezing the balls off a brass monkey' is a nautical term? It is to do with the differential co-efficient of expansion of iron balls on the brass stand (known as a monkey), and nothing to do with simian emasculation.

Answer 9

Didn't know that about the feathers, always thought it meant you were fuming about something

Answer 10

Oooh you haven't a clue have you,you should try and research it,you are totally wrong!These are the meanings ;

What does the expression spitting feathers mean?

Angry to the point of madness with flecks of saliva flying from the mouth of the angry person as they shout and yell at the object of their upset. These flecks were likened to very small feathers or small parts of larger feathers hence 'Spitting feathers'



And the saying 'shooting yourself in the foot' does mean landing yourself in it.

We are all smarter than you!