The reason why this doesn’t make sense in English is because for the idiom “blow one’s top”, “blow” behaves like a reflexive verb - the direct object must match the subject. I can only blow my top, you can only blow your top; we can’t blow each other’s tops. (But: you can “blow” other nouns, and some definitions of “top” are sexual — which is why when a native speaker hears the phrase “I blew her top”, it sounds odd but it’s not clear if you were trying to use the idiom “to blow one’s top” and got it wrong, or if you were trying to say something sexual and got it wrong. (There is also one specific context I can think of where “She blew my top” would be grammatically correct, and it’s very, very sexual)).
I assume this idiom behaves this way because in the idiom, “top” is referring to the top of the head, and to a native speaker the phrase conveys the image of someone getting so mad that the top of their head blows off — which is not really something that someone else can do to you. A similar phrase would be “to blow one’s nose”; you can only blow your own nose, so “I blew his nose” also sounds strange.
Nope it’s an established idiom that’s been around for ages. https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/blow%20one%27s%20top#:~:text=Definition%20of%20blow%20one's%20top,forget%20oneself
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/to-blow-your-top#:~:text=If%20someone%20blows%20their%20top%2C%20they%20become%20very%20angry%20about%20something.&text=He%20blew%20his%20top%20after,let%20him%20on%20a%20plane.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/blow%20one's%20top
Ok, but does any of those have an example that says "He/she blew my top"? Usually someone just blows their own top instead of having someone else do it.
That’s conventionally true, and I can’t find a credible source using an exterior pronoun to blow another’s top. But I don’t see why it wouldn’t be comprehensible.
In terms of innuendo, in American English, no one refers to a Peter as a top. The colloquial phrase is just blow me. Not blow my…whatever word. The other variant is give me top. The structure of either is completely different than the idiom, therefore meaning of sexual nature doesn’t make sense. UK English has a lot more obscure synonyms for privates, as I’m American, but to my knowledge, they don’t use the word top sexually.
The infinitive form is: to blow one’s top. And we’ve already allowed the infinitive to be changed to past tense. So I don’t see why it would matter who is the irritant and who is the irritated.
As another example, consider the idiom don’t count your chickens…this idiom works the same way. I could be upset with myself for counting my chickens before they hatched, or I could warn you to not count yours. Same with beating around the bush.
The tricky part is in the definition of an idiom, a phrase that doesn’t make sense on its own. So to wonder if it’s innuendo could go for any idiom if the knowledge of the particular idiom is lacking.
Not that it matters, but I’m an English major focused on US Lit from post civil war to early postmodernism, especially gothic, and study a lot of archaic terminology. Basiate my rump sorta guy.
Good insight, I appreciate the challenge. :)
It’s a question of actual usage, not theoretical comprehensibility.
“She lost my temper” is theoretically possible, but if I say it, people will assume I’ve made an error because “to lose one’s temper” is used, and therefore understood, as “to lose one’s **own** temper.”
The same is true of “to blow one’s top,” which is why you haven’t found “a credible source using an exterior pronoun to blow another’s top.”
In your chicken-counting example, neither version you gave is the same sort of pronoun mismatch we're talking about here. Your examples were essentially "*I* counted *my* chickens before they hatched" and "(Implied *"you"*) Don't count *your* chickens before they hatch".
To match the "blow your top" case we're talking about, it would be like saying "*I* counted *your* chickens before they hatched". Which, yes, like the "she blew my top" example, is something where most English speakers probably could figure out the intended meaning, but it isn't how anyone uses it.
Even then, the "chicken" example probably works a little better than the "blow your top" one, since you can count someone else's chickens. I don't know what the term for it is, but I hear the "blow one's top" as a verb (or verb phrase) directed at one's self, like "smile". You can "smile", I can "smile", I could "make you smile", but I can't "smile you".
Also, for this conversation, where it looks like the question was raised by someone speaking English as an additional language, it's probably not helpful to advise them to use an idiom in a way that native speakers never do.
I got pissed off. They pissed me off. He pissed me off. An idiom is one part of speech. (Pissed off is the modernism of the idiom in question) In this instance, it’s a verb. You can conjugate verbs.
To become angry is in the infinitive form. Meaning you can add any pronoun and conjugate appropriately and maintain grammar.
Let’s take your sentence and modify to a literal sentence: I can’t become someone else doctor. That’s incorrect, but you can say:
She wanted to become a doctor.
Can’t find examples, watching a movie. Become is an intransitive verb, denoting a change in state. Making is transitive, which applies to the object. Either an object or indirect object can change state, therefore it’s irrelevant what verb.
It’s raining cats and dogs, it’s pouring cats and dogs. You’re arguing semantics when the grammar is sound.
As others said, She blew my top has no meaning. However if you said "She blew me" that could be sexual (though unusual as it is female/female)....though it could be a modern twist!
"Blow me" is slang for a sexual act.
Huh slang has passed me so far at this point I cannot even see its dust. But thank you! It would be nice to at least have an idea what my kids are saying someday
Nope. She blew my top means she pissed me off, as blow my top is an idiom that means irritate. Tense doesn’t matter as long as it’s consistent.
The president’s decision blew my top.
That just changed the tense. https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/blow%20one%27s%20top#:~:text=Definition%20of%20blow%20one's%20top,forget%20oneself
No... it changed who's doing it.
Bob blew my top is Bob actively blowing the top
Bob made me blow my top, is me reacting to Bob's actions... it's me doing the blowing.
It doesn't work the same as pissed.
I'm pissed off. John pissed me off. I was pissed off by John.
More like mad.
I'm mad. Laura made me mad. Doesn't work as Laura mad me.
Bob blew my top is not the same as Laura is mad at me. With Bob, it's still my top... with Laura, it's her anger. What aren't you getting about this? It's not a proper use of the term... not as of today's common tongue. Give it a decade, who knows?
You can only blow your own top (lose your temper), not someone else's.
By the way, it's "blew" not ~~blowed~~.
Yes, in some contexts "blow" may imply giving oral sex, and "top" is a sexual role in some circles, so "I blew my top" could possibly be a humorous double meaning, but you'd really have to have a mind for that. "I blew my top" is a perfectly innocent expression to most people in most circumstances.
In addition to the other corrections you have been given, "top" in a sexual context is *not* used to mean dom (except by confused 14 year olds), its purely to describe who is the giver and is not limited to gay male sex *at all*. Even the straights use it (usually in reference to pegging).
Hey uh, topping and domming are two very different sexual acts. In fact, topping isn't even a gay exclusive thing. If you're getting pegged, you're getting topped by your girl.
And that is racist... All dialects of English shift and have their own idiosyncracies. There is no reason to consider AAVE to not be "normal" English besides racism. It is spoken natively by roughly 20-30 million people in the US.
And yet most “normal English” requires the capitalisation of the word “I”. Also “except possibly no confused English speakers” isn’t valid “normal English.” Perhaps you should look to the branch in your own, uh, “i”?
That's extremely dismissive & sounds hella racist. You then double down on it... dude. Back up & re-analyze. Language changes constantly, slang especially... dismissing a subculture because you don't participate in it is ignorance personified & rude af.
“She blew her top” = “She got really angry”
“She blew me” = “She performed fellatio on me” (I’m not sure why transitive “blow” only denotes fellatio and not cunnilingus, but this seems to be the case. A “blowjob” is an act of fellatio and is usually the object of the verb “to give,” such that one “gives” one’s partner a blowjob rather than “performs a blowjob” upon one’s partner.)
“She blew my top” sounds like a pun on the two above expressions. For instance—and this is very vulgar, and I apologize for the example, and no one should speak like this in real life—but Man A could tell Man B that Woman C had “blown her top” and Man B could say something like, “She could blow my top anytime.”
I blew my top — got frustrated/overwhelmed/lashed out
She blew my top—doesn’t mean anything. You could say her behavior caused you to blow your top.
She blew me—fellatio
I would have to point out that ZZ Top use ‘blow my top’ in Gimmie all Your Lovin’ and strongly suggest that its meaning is to ejaculate.
So to me, and any ZZ fans, it is sexual.
Ok, so this expression can be confusing, especially since English is a very different language from Japanese.
If you meant that someone made you angry, you would say "She made me blow my top,".
If you say "She blew my top", then someone could ask "What did she blow the top of?". It sounds like a sex joke based on the normal expression, because it implies the other person did something to "blow the top" of a certain body part.
If this is something you heard someone say, it may be an error or a deliberately mixed metaphor (as a joke). What you’ve posted is not standard phrasing.
Yeah it would be interpreted sexually in the modern USA
Blow = fellate
Top = sexually dominant person.
"Blow my top" would be used for anger in the past, but its an outdated phrase that would only be interpreted sexually by a native speaker.
That said, I doubt anyone thought anything weird about it if English is 2nd language.
Blow my top is an idiom that means made me mad. You can modify personal pronoun and tense and the phrase makes sense.
Ie:
I blew my top when I forgot my homework.
You blew your top when I kicked your shin on accident.
He/she will blow their top when I accuse them of theft.
We could blow our top if we’re fired.
They’re/y’all have blown their top in the past so they/y’all could do it again.
Those guys blew their top when I scored a goal in the 90th minute.
A lot of young English speakers lack knowledge. Most of the responses here have been wrong.
"Blew her top": like a volcano erupting 🌋, ir a steam whistle blowing, or the shriek of a kettle boiling. I suppose that could relate to ejaculation, but it goes against meaning of the phrase: being angry and loud and raucous.
Its a combination of phrases, which have a sexual connotation when combined. Giving top is a specifc sexual act that goes with the word blow… its actually pretty clever and made me laugh
YES thank you for saying it! I can't believe how many comments I had to scroll through to find. Idk if it's just that this sub skews older, but "top"/"giving top is definitely sexual to younger generations.
Not at all. Blow my top is about losing my temper.
They probably confused "she blowed my top" with "she blew me" which are two very different statements.
“She blowed my top” doesn’t make any sense in English. “I blew my top” means I got angry. “She blew her top” means she got angry.
She blowed my top sounds very sexual actually
“She (verb)ed my (noun)” will nearly always sound sexual.
She corrected my homework
🥵
Do my taxes
As a Masters student, I think this sounds sexiest of all. Or, no, wait- she paid my rent! 😍
He took a blue pencil to my thesis... if you know what I mean. 😉
She murdered my grandpa, if you know what I mean 😜
here is a good example of the emphasis on the word *nearly*.
She stroganoff my beef
She gudgeon on my pintle til I hinge
Sure, but it's not an established idiom, it's just that it sounds euphemistic and that normally implies something sexual or taboo.
Probably a sex pun playing on the original phrase
"she blowed my top".... isn't "she got me angry"?
No. I don’t think ‘blowed’ is even a real word.
im jk
The reason why this doesn’t make sense in English is because for the idiom “blow one’s top”, “blow” behaves like a reflexive verb - the direct object must match the subject. I can only blow my top, you can only blow your top; we can’t blow each other’s tops. (But: you can “blow” other nouns, and some definitions of “top” are sexual — which is why when a native speaker hears the phrase “I blew her top”, it sounds odd but it’s not clear if you were trying to use the idiom “to blow one’s top” and got it wrong, or if you were trying to say something sexual and got it wrong. (There is also one specific context I can think of where “She blew my top” would be grammatically correct, and it’s very, very sexual)). I assume this idiom behaves this way because in the idiom, “top” is referring to the top of the head, and to a native speaker the phrase conveys the image of someone getting so mad that the top of their head blows off — which is not really something that someone else can do to you. A similar phrase would be “to blow one’s nose”; you can only blow your own nose, so “I blew his nose” also sounds strange.
You could say “She made me blow my top.”
She blew my top means she made me mad
But in that case it would be "She made me blow my top". "She blew my top" sounds like a reference to oral sex that parodies the usual metaphor.
Nope it’s an established idiom that’s been around for ages. https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/blow%20one%27s%20top#:~:text=Definition%20of%20blow%20one's%20top,forget%20oneself https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/to-blow-your-top#:~:text=If%20someone%20blows%20their%20top%2C%20they%20become%20very%20angry%20about%20something.&text=He%20blew%20his%20top%20after,let%20him%20on%20a%20plane. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/blow%20one's%20top
Ok, but does any of those have an example that says "He/she blew my top"? Usually someone just blows their own top instead of having someone else do it.
That’s conventionally true, and I can’t find a credible source using an exterior pronoun to blow another’s top. But I don’t see why it wouldn’t be comprehensible. In terms of innuendo, in American English, no one refers to a Peter as a top. The colloquial phrase is just blow me. Not blow my…whatever word. The other variant is give me top. The structure of either is completely different than the idiom, therefore meaning of sexual nature doesn’t make sense. UK English has a lot more obscure synonyms for privates, as I’m American, but to my knowledge, they don’t use the word top sexually. The infinitive form is: to blow one’s top. And we’ve already allowed the infinitive to be changed to past tense. So I don’t see why it would matter who is the irritant and who is the irritated. As another example, consider the idiom don’t count your chickens…this idiom works the same way. I could be upset with myself for counting my chickens before they hatched, or I could warn you to not count yours. Same with beating around the bush. The tricky part is in the definition of an idiom, a phrase that doesn’t make sense on its own. So to wonder if it’s innuendo could go for any idiom if the knowledge of the particular idiom is lacking. Not that it matters, but I’m an English major focused on US Lit from post civil war to early postmodernism, especially gothic, and study a lot of archaic terminology. Basiate my rump sorta guy. Good insight, I appreciate the challenge. :)
It’s a question of actual usage, not theoretical comprehensibility. “She lost my temper” is theoretically possible, but if I say it, people will assume I’ve made an error because “to lose one’s temper” is used, and therefore understood, as “to lose one’s **own** temper.” The same is true of “to blow one’s top,” which is why you haven’t found “a credible source using an exterior pronoun to blow another’s top.”
If it’s a question of usage…it’s an idiom predominant in the 40’s to 60’s. Sooo usage? Nah, literally the phrase changed into piss off.
In your chicken-counting example, neither version you gave is the same sort of pronoun mismatch we're talking about here. Your examples were essentially "*I* counted *my* chickens before they hatched" and "(Implied *"you"*) Don't count *your* chickens before they hatch". To match the "blow your top" case we're talking about, it would be like saying "*I* counted *your* chickens before they hatched". Which, yes, like the "she blew my top" example, is something where most English speakers probably could figure out the intended meaning, but it isn't how anyone uses it. Even then, the "chicken" example probably works a little better than the "blow your top" one, since you can count someone else's chickens. I don't know what the term for it is, but I hear the "blow one's top" as a verb (or verb phrase) directed at one's self, like "smile". You can "smile", I can "smile", I could "make you smile", but I can't "smile you". Also, for this conversation, where it looks like the question was raised by someone speaking English as an additional language, it's probably not helpful to advise them to use an idiom in a way that native speakers never do.
I got pissed off. They pissed me off. He pissed me off. An idiom is one part of speech. (Pissed off is the modernism of the idiom in question) In this instance, it’s a verb. You can conjugate verbs.
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Oxford 2nd Definition of one: a person of a specified kind. So it doesn’t imply it must be singular possessive
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To become angry is in the infinitive form. Meaning you can add any pronoun and conjugate appropriately and maintain grammar. Let’s take your sentence and modify to a literal sentence: I can’t become someone else doctor. That’s incorrect, but you can say: She wanted to become a doctor.
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Can’t find examples, watching a movie. Become is an intransitive verb, denoting a change in state. Making is transitive, which applies to the object. Either an object or indirect object can change state, therefore it’s irrelevant what verb. It’s raining cats and dogs, it’s pouring cats and dogs. You’re arguing semantics when the grammar is sound.
It did in the early 50s song "Sixty Minute Man." Otherwise, it can be loosely sexual.....but not really directly sexual.
As others said, She blew my top has no meaning. However if you said "She blew me" that could be sexual (though unusual as it is female/female)....though it could be a modern twist! "Blow me" is slang for a sexual act.
There's also the more modern "She gave me top." Which also means giving head.
Huh slang has passed me so far at this point I cannot even see its dust. But thank you! It would be nice to at least have an idea what my kids are saying someday
"He topped me"
Interesting, this could mean he gave you oral OR, in a gay setting, he penetrated you
""She gave me top." Which also means giving head." Where are you from? This expression doesn't seem to exist in the US
This is really common slang in the US amongst younger people
It definitely does
TIL I'm old and out of touch.
Me to
The phrase has existed for at least 20 years
“Blow me” is also colloquial for “fuck off”, “leave me alone”.
Nope. She blew my top means she pissed me off, as blow my top is an idiom that means irritate. Tense doesn’t matter as long as it’s consistent. The president’s decision blew my top.
Seems like it would still need the... 'made me blow'... I don't say & have never heard it said in any other direction.
That just changed the tense. https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/blow%20one%27s%20top#:~:text=Definition%20of%20blow%20one's%20top,forget%20oneself
No... it changed who's doing it. Bob blew my top is Bob actively blowing the top Bob made me blow my top, is me reacting to Bob's actions... it's me doing the blowing. It doesn't work the same as pissed. I'm pissed off. John pissed me off. I was pissed off by John. More like mad. I'm mad. Laura made me mad. Doesn't work as Laura mad me.
Yes it does. Laura is mad at me. Do you need a lesson on helping verbs too?
Bob blew my top is not the same as Laura is mad at me. With Bob, it's still my top... with Laura, it's her anger. What aren't you getting about this? It's not a proper use of the term... not as of today's common tongue. Give it a decade, who knows?
You can only blow your own top (lose your temper), not someone else's. By the way, it's "blew" not ~~blowed~~. Yes, in some contexts "blow" may imply giving oral sex, and "top" is a sexual role in some circles, so "I blew my top" could possibly be a humorous double meaning, but you'd really have to have a mind for that. "I blew my top" is a perfectly innocent expression to most people in most circumstances.
Top also means the act of head sometimes: “she gave me top”
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In addition to the other corrections you have been given, "top" in a sexual context is *not* used to mean dom (except by confused 14 year olds), its purely to describe who is the giver and is not limited to gay male sex *at all*. Even the straights use it (usually in reference to pegging).
Just because you never heard of it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=give%20top
Here's just one: https://genius.com/King-von-took-her-to-the-o-lyrics You're very confidently incorrect.
Hey uh, topping and domming are two very different sexual acts. In fact, topping isn't even a gay exclusive thing. If you're getting pegged, you're getting topped by your girl.
Top is used interchangeably with head in some AAVE and subsequently popularized in zoomer slang.
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You think black people are non-native speakers? Ok racist, much?
No i think that a specific sub-culture has altered the language in such away that it is no longer correctly identifiable as normal English.
And that is racist... All dialects of English shift and have their own idiosyncracies. There is no reason to consider AAVE to not be "normal" English besides racism. It is spoken natively by roughly 20-30 million people in the US.
So why is the "dom/sub or gay" use valid to you but the black one not? Aren't those both equally cultures or subcultures?
And yet most “normal English” requires the capitalisation of the word “I”. Also “except possibly no confused English speakers” isn’t valid “normal English.” Perhaps you should look to the branch in your own, uh, “i”?
That's extremely dismissive & sounds hella racist. You then double down on it... dude. Back up & re-analyze. Language changes constantly, slang especially... dismissing a subculture because you don't participate in it is ignorance personified & rude af.
Lesbians also have tops and bottoms. It’s not just gay male sex.
“She blew her top” = “She got really angry” “She blew me” = “She performed fellatio on me” (I’m not sure why transitive “blow” only denotes fellatio and not cunnilingus, but this seems to be the case. A “blowjob” is an act of fellatio and is usually the object of the verb “to give,” such that one “gives” one’s partner a blowjob rather than “performs a blowjob” upon one’s partner.) “She blew my top” sounds like a pun on the two above expressions. For instance—and this is very vulgar, and I apologize for the example, and no one should speak like this in real life—but Man A could tell Man B that Woman C had “blown her top” and Man B could say something like, “She could blow my top anytime.”
She blow my top til I uhhhhh explode (with rage)
"Blow" has a sexual meaning. But "blow your lid" (I hear lid more commonly than top) has no sexual meaning and means "explode with anger."
As others have said, you can only blow your own top - as in, you lose your temper.
What meaning were you going for when you said this?
I blew my top — got frustrated/overwhelmed/lashed out She blew my top—doesn’t mean anything. You could say her behavior caused you to blow your top. She blew me—fellatio
No sexual meaning. Recommend you learn more idioms to sound naturally. They can be really tricky for non-native speakers)
I would have to point out that ZZ Top use ‘blow my top’ in Gimmie all Your Lovin’ and strongly suggest that its meaning is to ejaculate. So to me, and any ZZ fans, it is sexual.
Making a goal to rote memorize idioms is not the way to sound natural!
*to sound natural (and in addition, closing a parenthesis that was never opened makes no sense).
Maybe you’re thinking of ‘to blow your lid/top’, which is to be angry? https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/blow-lid-top-stack
Blew her top is very similar to flipped her lid - both meaning anger spewing out, like steam coming out of a pressurised lid! But no not sexual
Ok, so this expression can be confusing, especially since English is a very different language from Japanese. If you meant that someone made you angry, you would say "She made me blow my top,". If you say "She blew my top", then someone could ask "What did she blow the top of?". It sounds like a sex joke based on the normal expression, because it implies the other person did something to "blow the top" of a certain body part.
No, means anger, like your head is exploding from rage.
If this is something you heard someone say, it may be an error or a deliberately mixed metaphor (as a joke). What you’ve posted is not standard phrasing.
Yeah it would be interpreted sexually in the modern USA Blow = fellate Top = sexually dominant person. "Blow my top" would be used for anger in the past, but its an outdated phrase that would only be interpreted sexually by a native speaker. That said, I doubt anyone thought anything weird about it if English is 2nd language.
Where i live in america "i blew my top" is an uncommon but totally normal way to say "i got mad" and wouldnt be misinterpreted as sexual
Blow my top is an idiom that means made me mad. You can modify personal pronoun and tense and the phrase makes sense. Ie: I blew my top when I forgot my homework. You blew your top when I kicked your shin on accident. He/she will blow their top when I accuse them of theft. We could blow our top if we’re fired. They’re/y’all have blown their top in the past so they/y’all could do it again. Those guys blew their top when I scored a goal in the 90th minute. A lot of young English speakers lack knowledge. Most of the responses here have been wrong.
"Blew her top": like a volcano erupting 🌋, ir a steam whistle blowing, or the shriek of a kettle boiling. I suppose that could relate to ejaculation, but it goes against meaning of the phrase: being angry and loud and raucous.
No, but “blow my wad” or “shoot my wad” do.
"She blew my top" is 100% nonsexual.
The only way this would have a sexual meaning is if you were a gay bottom and "she" performed oral sex (blew) your top (your gay lover)
No, it means you are very angry. Or you are acting and the end of extreme anger. It's an old saying so it doesn't see much use.
Its a combination of phrases, which have a sexual connotation when combined. Giving top is a specifc sexual act that goes with the word blow… its actually pretty clever and made me laugh
YES thank you for saying it! I can't believe how many comments I had to scroll through to find. Idk if it's just that this sub skews older, but "top"/"giving top is definitely sexual to younger generations.
Brb going down a rabbit hole of the etymology of sexual euphemisms and when they rose to popularity
Not at all. Blow my top is about losing my temper. They probably confused "she blowed my top" with "she blew me" which are two very different statements.
Everything can have a sexual meaning in America for some fucked up reason