fuse

A tendency to become angered, enraged, or upset very quickly or easily; a short temper. I'm usually a pretty calm person, but whenever I start driving I find I have such a short fuse.

To have a tendency to become angered, enraged, or upset very quickly or easily; to have a short temper. I'm usually a pretty calm person, but whenever I start driving I find I'm on a short fuse.

To react furiously and/or violently, to the point of losing control of one's behavior. Mom totally blew her fuse when I told her I had failed math. Don't blow your fuse, it's just a tiny scratch on the car.

The metal box that contains a building's fuses (safety devices that keep circuits from overloading) The electrician is taking a look at the fuse box right now.

To have a tendency to become angered, enraged, or upset very quickly or easily; to have a short temper. I'm usually a pretty calm person, but whenever I start driving I find I have such a short fuse.

To do something that instigates or initiates some intense, dangerous, and widespread action or reaction. Many have accused the leader of lighting the fuse for war with his inflammatory remarks. The law seems poised to light the fuse for protests across the nation should it be passed.

A tendency to become angered, enraged, or upset very quickly or easily. I'm usually a pretty calm person, but whenever I start driving I find I have such a quick temper.

to bond something together with something. You have to fuse the upper layer to the lower layer with heat. He used heat and pressure to fuse the patch with the soft rubber of the raft.

to bond with something. The metal has fused with the glass coating on the tank. I didn't know that metal could fuse with glass.

a bad temper that can be easily aroused. Tyler has a quick temper and doesn't mind letting everyone see it.

Also, blow a gasket. Lose one's temper, express furious anger. For example, When his paycheck bounced, John blew a fuse, or Tell Mom what really happened before she blows a gasket. An electric fuse is said to "blow" (melt) when the circuit is overloaded, whereas a gasket, used to seal a piston, "blows" (breaks) when the pressure is too high. The first of these slangy terms dates from the 1930s, the second from the 1940s. Also see blow one's top; keep one's cool.

If someone is on a short fuse or has a short fuse, they lose their temper very easily. He warned Abbott that he was on a short fuse. He is irritable and has a short fuse, letting you know when he's not pleased. Note: See the explanation at light the fuse.

If you blow a fuse, you suddenly lose your temper and cannot control your anger. For all my experience, I blew a fuse in the quarter-final and could have been sent off. He's going to blow a fuse when he finds out about Miller. Note: A fuse is a safety device found in electrical equipment. If the equipment becomes too hot, the fuse blows, or burns. This breaks the electrical circuit, so that the equipment will stop working.

If someone or something lights the fuse, they do something which starts something dangerous or exciting. An outbreak of the virus could light the fuse on the world's next pandemic. This event might have lit the fuse which later led to a depressive breakdown. Note: The fuse referred to here is the type that is used to set off a firework or explosive device.

To explode with anger.

To lose one’s temper. The first two terms allude to clearing the stack of a ship by blowing air through it; the last refers to the sudden power stoppage when a fuse blows. All are slang from the first half of the twentieth century. Jane Smiley wrote in Horse Heaven (2000), “‘It’s kind of fun in a way. At least I get to blow my stack a lot and they don’t mind. Blowing your stack is the way they do things here.’”

Lose your temper. Back in the days before circuit breakers, a house's electrical system was regulated by a fuse box. Individual fuses connected to separate lines throughout the house were inserted into the box. When a circuit became overloaded, a thin metal strip in the fuse melted, breaking the circuit to prevent an overload and a possible fire. You'd then replace the fuse after disconnecting whatever appliance might have caused the overload. Someone who because very angry was said to blow a fuse, which doesn't make sense because a fuse was meant to defuse, so to speak, the situation. But no one ever said that idioms must be rational. Similar expressions that make more sense are “blow your stack,” which came from the era of steam engines that would explode if the steam wasn't allowed to explode, and “have a meltdown,” as in a nuclear reactor gone wild.