A nice lady named Jana Sparboe contacted me about this old metaphor that she had heard about all her life.

Getting someone’s goat (usually used in the past tense) is getting up their ‘ire.’

To discover what a goat has to do with getting upset about something, a little American book, written under the pseudonym, “Number 1500” published in 1904 called "Life in Sing Sing" has the answer. Therein the word "goat" is given as slang for anger.

The first mention of this phrase in print, per se, seems to be from a Wisconsin newspaper called The Stevens Point Daily Journal in May of 1909.

“Wouldn’t that get your goat? We’d been transferring the same water all night from the tub to the bowl and back again.”

The expression made its way across the pond to England by at least 1924, when it was used in a story by Nobel Prize winner John Galsworthy called "White Monkey," clearly seen as a recently coined expression.

“That had got the chairman’s goat! – Got his goat? What expressions they used nowadays!”

If you have a phrase you would like to see featured here, please text Stan at 931-212-3303 or email him at stan@stclair.net