have kittens
English
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Verb
edithave kittens (third-person singular simple present has kittens, present participle having kittens, simple past and past participle had kittens)
- (informal) To become extremely upset.
- Your mum will have kittens when she sees what you've done to your hair!
- My teacher has kittens every time I get a question wrong.
- 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter VII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
- He re-gurgled. “But this is terrible.” “Might be considerably better, I agree.” “Your uncle will be most upset.” “He'll have kittens.”
- 2010, Jennifer Egan, “Safari”, in A Visit from the Goon Squad:
- ‘Prepare yourself,’ he warned. ‘Your dad is having kittens.’
- (informal) To be in a state of frantic nervousness.
- The guests are starting to arrive, but the hostess is having kittens because nothing is ready yet.
- 2011 [1965], Olivia Manning, Friends And Heroes (The Balkan Trilogy)[1], Random House, →ISBN:
- Phipps went on: “One of our chaps, out on a reccy over the Bulgarian front, thought he saw something in the snow. Something fishy. He dropped down to have a dekko and nearly had kittens. What d'you think? Jerry's got a mass of stuff there—tanks, guns, lorries, every sort of heavy armament. All camouflaged. White.”
- (literal) Usually of a female cat, to give birth to kittens.
Translations
editto become extremely upset
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See also
editFurther reading
edit- “have kittens v.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present