Word.ws English Dictionary

spit nails

spit nails verb: to speak or sputter in a very angry manner.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To speak or sputter in a very angry manner.
    • [O]ne thing about Aunt Jenny gets me so mad I could spit nails.1965 September 6, Ann Landers, “Exception is Acknowledged”, in Spokane Daily Chronicle, retrieved 22 Nov 2013, page 17
    • The three chiefs of staff are described by sources as ‘spitting nails’ over the latest proposals to cut the defence budget even further.1993 November 9, “RAF chief attacks Treasury over cuts”, in The Independent, UK, retrieved 22 Nov 2013

Forms of spit nails

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

Questions about spit nails

What does spit nails mean?
Spit nails means to speak or sputter in a very angry manner.
What part of speech is spit nails?
Spit nails is a verb.
What is the past tense of spit nails?
The past tense of spit nails is spat nails.

Words near spit nails in the dictionary

  1. spit it out
  2. spit jack
  3. spit jacks
  4. spit mask
  5. spit masks
  6. spit nails
  7. spit of land
  8. spit on
  9. spit out
  10. spit roast
  11. spit roasted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spit nails (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 nails.ogg.

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