Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Hissy fit

If you get in a tizzy, don’t throw a hissy fit.

I looked at the phrase in a tizzy last week, so let’s wrap it up by checking out hissy fit. (Thank you, Linda Harris, for mentioning hissy fit in a Facebook comment.)

This phrase sounds like it dates back a ways, don’t you think? Maybe late 19^th century?

Well once again…

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... It ain't necessarily so.

This is what the Phrase Thesaurus has to say about it.

Hissy fit: A temperamental outburst; a tantrum.

And here’s their take on the origin:

The allusion in this expression may be to the hissing and spluttering of such an outburst, or it may simply be a contraction of 'hysterical'. The term originated in the USA in the mid 20th century and is first recorded in a 1934 edition of American Speech: "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 a person in question was very disturbed and very angry." 'Hissy fit' was little used outside of the USA until the late 20th century. 

According to Ngram, it starts appearing with some regularity around 1970.

The earliest usage I could find (searching Google Books) is… in all places!... in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, 1954. In 1956, it appears again in The Numbers of Our Days: A Novel by Francis Irby Gwaltney. 

So, once again, I've been snookered by a phrase that sounds at least a century old, but isn't.

Don't call this a hissy fit...
Cartoon caricature of Christina Rossetti by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1862, showing her having a tantrum after reading The Times review of her poetry. By Dante Gabriel Rossetti - The Bridgeman Art Library, Object 392836, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48516342