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

A compound of spit +‎ fire as a euphemistic rendition of shitfire, from Spanish cacafuego ("braggart") with the literal translation of "fireshitter".

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word spitfire.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • 1: A cleaning product used at job corps. Smells like shit.

    2: The coolest person ever to grace the earth.

    December 7, 2006

  • 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

  • A Yankee deserter called Scarlett this when he came back to raid the house.

    October 29, 2012

  • 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