hissy / hissy fit

Dave Wilton

14 Oct 2026 • 3 min read

1862 caricature of Christina Rossetti throwing a hissy fit after having read a Times review of her poetry; drawn by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The handwritten text reads: “‘Miss Rossetti can point to work which could not easily be mended.” Times.”

14 October 2026

A hissy or hissy fit is a slang term for a tantrum or angry outburst. As an adjective, it means angry or in a bad temper. The origin is somewhat uncertain, with two leading contenders for the underlying metaphor. It could be from hysterical, or it could be echoic, referring to a hissing sound.

What we do know is that the terms started as regionalisms in Texas and Oklahoma in the 1930s, or perhaps somewhat earlier, before spreading to the rest of the United States. And of the two, the plain hissy is older.

The earliest use that I’m aware of was uncovered by Garson O’Toole and is found in Texas’s Austin Statesman of 7 April 1931:

And another letter from J. W. Reid Jr., which I’ll have to get to later as I’m running late and Ed Davenport will by having a hissy about getting in the editorial page on time.

Another early use with quotation marks, indicating the term would be unfamiliar to readers, is from Oklahoma’s Seminole Producer of 2 December 1932:

It might interest the “Pore Old Prorated Oil Field Boy” to know that two city people threw a “hissy” over his letter, calling down the wrath of all the gods there be on his anonymous head.

And we get it again without quotation marks nearly a year later in the Dallas Morning News of 26 November 1933:

A Dallas lad who asked his sister in Arkansas to send his Dallas girl something for him, had a hissy when sis wrote she had sent the girl a very handsome quilt of her own fabrication.

Hissy is documented in the February 1934 issue of American Speech, where the correspondent claims oral use from “eight or ten years” before:

Hissy is probably provincial slang. I have heard it for eight or ten years. He threw a hissy or He had a hissy means that the person in question was very disturbed and very angry. People who have adopted the word “couldn’t do without it”—so I am told.

And the earliest use of hissy fit that I’ve found is from Oklahoma City’s News-Review of 25 November 1943:

Rev. Mathes thinks some of the old shell-backs that have hissy fits every time the younger generation have a good time have the same complex as those old timers who stoned the prophets and burned the witches in Salem. They also forget that they used to kick their heels pretty high when they were young.

(There is potentially a use of hissy fit in a 1939 book titled Contrasts, Presents Tomorrow's Authors, but I am unable to find a copy, either print or scanned.)

Perhaps the oddest use of hissy fit that I have found is in an analysis of international, great-power politics that appeared in the Houston Post of 27 February 1978:

Iraq is a semi-psychotic Soviet client state with an outlet on the Persian Gulf, and the Soviets have poured arms into Iraqi depots to degree which gives Iran a hissy fit and should give us one, too—if we were paying attention.

The Iranian Revolution would overthrow the Shah a year later, and Iraq would invade Iran in 1980, kicking off the eight-year Iran-Iraq War. A bit more than a hissy fit.

Sources:

Bryson, Artemisia B. “Homely Words in Texas.” American Speech, 9.1, February 1934, 70–71 at 71. JSTOR.

Dictionary of American Regional English, vol. 2 of 6. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1991, 1021, s.v. hissy, n.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, accessed 24 September 2026, s.v. hissy, n.

J. M. V. “Back Talk.” Seminole Producer (Seminole, Oklahoma), 2 December 1932, 2/3. Newspaper.com. (The page is labeled “Two,” but is the eighth page. There seems to be a missing section designation as page numbering restarts with the seventh page, which contains a full-page ad and no page number.)

Morris, Donald. “Vital Iran Deserves Closer Attention.” Houston Post (Texas), 27 February 1978, 3C/3–4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

O’Toole, Garson. “Re: hissy (1932), hissy fit (1943).” ADS-L, 24 September 2026.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2003, s.v. hissy fit, n.; s.v. 1976, hissy, adj. & n.

Richardson, Vivian. “No Indian Givers These, but Plenty Wild!” Dallas Morning News (Texas), 1, 26 November 1933. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Shapiro, Fred. “Re: hissy (1932), hissy fit (1943).” ADS-L, 24 September 2026.

“Town Talk.” Austin Statesman (Texas), 7 April 1931, 4/1. Newspapers.com.

“The Windjammer” News-Review (Oklahoma City), 25 November 1943, 2/2. Newspapers.com.

Image credit: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1862. Wikimedia Commons. UK National Trust Collection. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.