see red
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to become extremely angry
Literally: perceive the color red
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
She saw red, and her fist thudded against his chest.
you see red If you were less distracted
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 “see red” mean?
to become extremely angry Literally: perceive the color red
Is “see red” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.