Word.ws English Dictionary

have a bird

have a bird verb: to freak out; to be shocked or upset.

Verb

have a bird (third-person singular simple present has a bird, present participle having a bird, simple past and past participle had a bird)

  1. (slang) To freak out; to be shocked or upset.
    • Didn't do anything great except saw "The Beatles" on The Ed Sullivan Show and Kathy practically had a bird.1964, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see have, a, bird.

Forms of have a bird

third-person singular presenthas a bird
present participlehaving a bird
past participlehad a bird
pasthad a bird

Questions about have a bird

What does have a bird mean?
Have a bird means to freak out; to be shocked or upset.
What part of speech is have a bird?
Have a bird is a verb.
What is the past tense of have a bird?
The past tense of have a bird is had a bird.

Words near have a bird in the dictionary

  1. Havdoloh
  2. have
  3. have a bad time of it
  4. have a ball
  5. have a bar of it
  6. have a bird
  7. have a bite
  8. have a blessed one
  9. have a bone in one's leg
  10. have a bone to pick
  11. have a brick in one's hat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: have a bird (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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