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Also,;; have kittens. Become extremely upset. For example, She'll have a fit when she sees Anne wearing the same dress, or Mom had a conniption fit when she heard about the broken mirror, or Don't take a fit—the car's not really damaged, or Jill was having kittens over the spoiled cake. One can also, as in His dithering about punctuation is enough to give me fits. Fit and fits, along with conniption fit, have been used in hyperbolic expressions to denote a bout of hysterics since the 1830s; throw a fit was first recorded in 1906, and have a fit in 1924; have kittens, alluding to being so upset as to bear kittens, also dates from about 1900.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
