Learn English – the origin of “hissy fit”

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I can't seem to find any definite earliest example of this expression, or a reason why "hissy" was chosen to describe a tantrum. Does anyone hiss when they are angry? When and why was the phrase coined?

Best Answer

The OED included hissy fit in their entry for hissy, writing:

hissy fit n. chiefly U.S. a fit of temper, an angry outburst, a tantrum.

1967 in Dict. Amer. Regional Eng. (1991) II. 1021/2 Pitched a hissy-fit.

1978 A. Maupin Tales of City 5 When I told my mom I was moving to San Francisco, she had an absolute hissy-fit!

1981 F. Flagg Coming Attractions 21 Momma always looks like she is on the verge of a hissy fit, but that's mainly because when she was eighteen, she stuck her head in a gas oven looking at some biscuits and blew her eyebrows off.

1999 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 22 Nov. 24/8 Elton John threw a hissy fit at Winnipeg Airport, Canada, after customs officers took almost two hours to clear his five-person entourage.

The 1967 usage is the first recorded usage that they give, so the phrase is relatively new. They suggest that this use of hissy is tied to hysterics, and they add:

Also 19– hissie, hussy, huzzy.

U.S. [Perhaps influenced by hysteric n.] = hissy fit n. at Additions.

1934 Amer. Speech 9 71 Hissy is probably provincial slang. I have heard it for eight or ten years. He threw a hissy or He had a hissy means that a person in question was very disturbed and very angry.

1949 Publ. Amer. Dial. Soc.xi. 7 She had a hissy when I told her she couldn't go.

1973 N.Y. Times 13 July 25, I wasn't all that keen about him riding bulls, but he could do a good job so I never throwed a hissy about it.

1992 C. McCarthy All Pretty Horses (1993) i. 72 Rawlins will pitch a pure hissy when he sees you, he said.

It seems possible that hissy came first--someone would go into hysterics and throw a tantrum if they didn't get their way. This eventually changed to become a hissy fit, or a "fit of hysterics". Note that there isn't a firm indication of origins, but this is the theory presented by the OED.

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