fed to the gills
Also, fed to the teeth; fed up. Disgusted, unable or unwilling to put up with something. For example, I'm fed to the gills with these delays (the gills here is slang for “mouth”), or He was fed to the teeth with her excuses, or I'm fed up—let's leave right now. Of these colloquial expressions, fed up, alluding to being overfull from having overeaten, dates from about 1900, and the others from the first half of the 1900s. Also see up to one's ears.
RELATED CONTENT
Ode To The SchwaHow do I love thee? Let me count the schwas. Not exactly what Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote in Sonnet 43 . . . but we like it all the same. Why? Because it finally pays tribute to the most frequent vowel sound in English: the schwa. What is the schwa and how does it sound? Simply put, the schwa is a reduced vowel sound written as …
How To Use The SlashThe slash (/)—sometimes called a slant, a solidus, a stroke, or a virgule—is a commonly employed symbol in the English language. Whatever you want to call this piece of punctuation, its role in English has greatly changed over time. The word slash first entered English in the late 14th century as a verb to describe the cutting movement of a weapon, a word derived from …
Nearby words
fecundate, fecundation, fecundatory, fecundity, fed, fed to the gills, fed up, fed., fed. res. bd., fed. res. bk., fedayee
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.