flip one's lid

From the analogy of a boiling pot explosively popping off its lid due to built-up internal pressure.

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

flip one's lid (third-person singular simple present flips one's lid, present participle flipping one's lid, simple past and past participle flipped one's lid)

1. (slang) To be explosively angry.
   • 2009, Dee Kassabian, My Four Fathers and Other Short Stories, page 45:

     His parents flipped their lids when the two lovebugs got hitched. Jonnie couldn't stand the fact that her beautiful young son, gone so long over seas, had now tangled up with an older woman, and even worse, an older divorced woman […]

2. (slang) To be very scared.

• (angry): blow a gasket, blow one's top, flip one's wig