pop one's cork

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pop one's cork (third-person singular simple present pops one's cork, present participle popping one's cork, simple past and past participle popped one's cork)

1. (idiomatic) To become explosively angry.
   • 2006 September 3, Ruth La Ferla, “The inside track on Oscars, Emmys, Grammys”, in Los Angeles Times, retrieved 5 July 2015:

     They even decided to give him something they never gave Burton: an honorary Oscar. When O'Toole got wind of it, though, he popped his cork like a bottle of bubbly, and, at age 70, reminded the academy that he was "still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright."

   • 2007 May 20, Ruth La Ferla, “The Once and Future Pee-wee”, in New York Times, retrieved 5 July 2015:

     Mr. Reubens, as a rock concert promoter, gets to pop his cork, spewing expletives with a patently cathartic force.

2. (idiomatic) To suddenly behave irrationally; to go crazy.
   • 1998, Marian Swerdlow, Underground Woman: My Four Years as a New York City Subway Conductor, →ISBN, page 172:

     And there was Conductor Reyes, who was perfectly ordinary until one day he popped his cork and started explaining delays by announcing Command Center's telephone number and urging riders to phone for themselves.

   • 2014 September 15, Ashley Esther Fetters Zuckerman, “Inside Movie: Examining American Beauty at 15: A masterpiece, or a farce?”, in Entertainment Weekly, retrieved 5 July 2015:

     I’m sorry to say that even the usually reliable David Denby of The New Yorker seems to have popped his cork, proclaiming it ‘by far the strongest American film of the year.’

   • 2015 July 2, Tom Corrigan, “Gun ownership debate rages on for the racists, crazies”, in Issaquah Press, retrieved 5 July 2015:

     Everything I’ve read says the shooter was a white supremacist who popped his cork.

3. (idiomatic, vulgar, of a man) To ejaculate.
   • 2009, Robert Ferrigno, Heart of the Assassin, →ISBN, page 2:

     [S]he had given him a perfunctory jerkoff, not even taking his dick out of his pants, laughing as he popped his cork within moments.

• blow one's cork, blow one's stack, blow one's top, go ape, go apeshit, hit the roof, hit the ceiling, lose it, lose one's rag, lose one's temper