Word.ws English Dictionary

spit feathers

spit feathers verb: to feel very thirsty.

Verb

spit feathers (third-person singular simple present spits feathers, present participle spitting feathers, simple past and past participle spat feathers or (US) spit feathers)

  1. (idiomatic) To feel very thirsty.
    • Where is that sodding drink? I'm spitting feathers.2003, Robert David MacDonald, “Salto Mortale”, in Plays Two, →ISBN, page 94
    • I was just about spitting feathers. My throat was so dry and sore that I could barely feel my own tongue.2003, M. Dylan Raskin, Little New York Bastard, →ISBN, page 202
    Synonyms:
    spit cotton
  2. (idiomatic) To feel very angry; to sputter angrily.
    • He is high as a kite on Fair Trade espressos and spitting feathers that Ted Nicholls is apparently having some sort of comeback.2007, Imogen Edwards-Jones, Anonymous, Fashion Babylon, →ISBN, page 19
    • Yesterday's heresy—the sort of thing that made orthodox theologians spit feathers—becomes today's tourist attraction.2011, Jonathan Wright, Heretics: The Creation of Christianity from the Gnostics to the Modern Church, →ISBN, page 258
    Synonyms:
    spit nails

Synonyms of spit feathers

Forms of spit feathers

third-person singular presentspits feathers
present participlespitting feathers
past participlespat feathers
pastspat feathers
past participle USspit feathers
past USspit feathers

Questions about spit feathers

What does spit feathers mean?
Spit feathers means to feel very thirsty.
What part of speech is spit feathers?
Spit feathers is a verb.
What is the past tense of spit feathers?
The past tense of spit feathers is spat feathers.

Words near spit feathers in the dictionary

  1. spit curl
  2. spit curls
  3. spit engine
  4. spit engines
  5. spit facts
  6. spit feathers
  7. spit fire
  8. spit fires
  9. spit guard
  10. spit guards
  11. spit hood

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spit feathers (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-spit feathers.ogg.

Cite this entry: “spit feathers.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spit_feathers. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.