piss and vinegar
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Full of energy and aggression
Literally: urine and acetic acid
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
We staggered out into the Madrid evening ‘ full of piss and vinegar’, as Dana said later, and somehow made our way to the Puerta del Sol, where there is a large circular fountain.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “piss and vinegar” mean?
Full of energy and aggression Literally: urine and acetic acid
Is “piss and vinegar” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.