[Ads-l] _break nasty_ "suddenly get threateningly angry, brush off, shine on, ig"

[Wilson Gray]

A Late Summer’s Fire
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=152450405X
Sandra Rorie - 2016 - ‎Preview
I didn't know if I was going to be quiet and not confront him. It wouldn't
do any good. I knew from many times in the past that he would just _break
nasty_ and still deny that he was having an affair with this woman.

The UD, 2005:
Break Nasty
(v): 1. to go the hell off on someone
2. to inform someone of their monumentous mistake
the meanest way you possibly can
3. to inform someone of their incompetence


I use "break nasty on," but one of my brothers, about twenty years younger
than I am, prefers "break nasty with." He learned the phrase in Sacramento,
whereas I learned it in Los Angeles.

-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org