have someone's guts for garters
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to be extremely angry with someone
Literally: to remove someone's intestines for use as garters
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
If Jake found out he would have her guts for garters!
I shall have your guts for garters one day.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “have someone's guts for garters” mean?
to be extremely angry with someone Literally: to remove someone's intestines for use as garters
Is “have someone's guts for garters” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.