Meaning & use
getting your goat
Last updated
Meaning
phraseidiominformal
Irritating you so much that you lose your patience or composure, often through a small but persistent annoyance.
Grammar: Get changes form with the tense and the possessive matches the person: it gets my goat, she got his goat.
Patterns
- something gets someone's goat
- someone is getting your goat
Stop humming that tune, because it is really getting your goat, isn't it?
What is getting your goat most this week, the noisy neighbors or the broken heater?
I knew my brother was only teasing to get my goat, so I refused to react.
Common combinations
- really get your goat
- Slow walkers on a narrow pavement really get my goat.
- try to get someone's goat
- He tried to get her goat by criticizing her cooking.
- it gets my goat when
- It gets my goat when people talk through a film.
- don't let it get your goat
- Don't let his rudeness get your goat; he does it to everyone.
Synonyms and how they differ
- annoy
- Annoy is neutral and works in any register, while getting your goat is a casual, colorful idiom.
- irk
- Irk is a more formal single verb and suggests mild irritation, whereas the idiom hints at being provoked into reacting.
- wind up
- Wind up is mainly British and often means teasing on purpose, while getting your goat can describe accidental irritation too.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: getting your goat or scapegoat?
getting your goat vs scapegoat
A scapegoat is someone unfairly blamed, which is different from getting someone's goat, which means irritating them.
Practice
Which sentence uses the idiom correctly?
Choose one answer.
The idiom needs the possessive before goat (my goat), so the first option is right; the others break the fixed pattern.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “getting your goat”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.