Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A quick-tempered or highly excitable person.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An irascible or passionate person; one whose temper is hot or fiery.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun colloq. A violent, irascible, or passionate person.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A person with a
fiery temper , someone easily provoked to anger. - noun obsolete A
spirited young woman.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a highly emotional and quick-tempered person (especially a girl or woman)
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Through a review of Army reports and the memories of a fellow POW tracked down in New Jersey, The Associated Press was able to reconstruct the conditions under which the young man — called a "spitfire" and the "life of the party" — starved to death in a prisoner of war camp.
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You know, Elizabeth Edwards has been described as a spitfire, highly educated.
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Truth and honesty: Betty was known as a spitfire from her first breath.
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Reading that word in a book drives me completely bat-f*ck crazy since I'm reading Corambis I'm going to channel one of the characters - Mildmay : I was chatting about this with my best friend, the lovely Starfire, and for her the 'hit the wall' word is 'spitfire'.
Archive 2010-02-01 orannia 2010
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Reading that word in a book drives me completely bat-f*ck crazy since I'm reading Corambis I'm going to channel one of the characters - Mildmay : I was chatting about this with my best friend, the lovely Starfire, and for her the 'hit the wall' word is 'spitfire'.
Romance Fail... orannia 2010
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These came from the direction of Mafeking, that place having proved too much a "spitfire" for their liking.
South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, 15th Dec. 1899 Louis Creswicke
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We still call a hasty person a "spitfire", and a calumniator
Myths of Babylonia and Assyria Donald Alexander Mackenzie 1904
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Skillman, NJ, is a real "spitfire," according to her parents, and is super outgoing.
Gap Unveils 2010 Casting Call Winners in babyGap and GapKids Stores Nationwide - Yahoo! Finance 2011
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The Aviation Heritage Museum, Australia began with the exhibition of the historical 'spitfire', and after a few years it was followed by the 'Lancaster bomber', which was associated with the Second World War.
WN.com - Articles related to Australia mining firm strikes gold in RP 2010
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The Aviation Heritage Museum, Australia began with the exhibition of the historical 'spitfire', and after a few years it was followed by the 'Lancaster bomber', which was associated with the Second World War.
WN.com - Articles related to Australia mining firm strikes gold in RP 2010
brandonpepin commented on the word spitfire
1: A cleaning product used at job corps. Smells like shit.
2: The coolest person ever to grace the earth.
December 7, 2006
chained_bear commented on the word spitfire
The H.M.S. Spitfire was listed as a "vessel belonging to the army" (British army), captured at Yorktown in 1781.
Also the name of a pretty cool fighter plane during World War II.
October 29, 2007
dailyword commented on the word spitfire
A Yankee deserter called Scarlett this when he came back to raid the house.
October 29, 2012
ry commented on the word spitfire
interesting note about the development of spitfire/shitfire on etymonline.com; apparently “shitfire” originally appeared meaning cannon; “spitfire” was a euphemization of same. The reference to a volatile personality (one who “spits fire”) came much later.
March 11, 2014