red mist

plural red mists

1. alsoattributivefigurativelyUncontrollable rage, anger sufficient to prevent clear thinking.

   What was that tackle about? The red mist still descends on Beckham occasionally.

   5 more examples

   Slowly the red mist faded from before Tarzan’s eyes. Things began to take form—he was regaining the perspective of civilized man.

   1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 45

   On the face of it, this appears to have fit into a pattern that seems familiar with Vettel's errors in recent times. In stressed moments, a sort of red mist seems to descend that reduces his capacity for rational thinking.

   2019 September 8, Andrew Benson, BBC Sport

   In that little office, seated before that wretched Do No Bend envelope, the red mist came down, and it wasn't a mist, it was a torrent.

   2023, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Spare, Penguin Random House, →ISBN

   Bellingham felt the red mist come down. He had been booked at the end of the first half after stamping into Dmitrijs Zelenkovs. Which only made his full-blooded slide challenge into Jurkovskis risky to say the least.

   2025 March 24, David Hytner, “Reece James bends it like Beckham to help England break down Latvia”, in The Guardian

   That red-mist moment prompted [James] Blake to dig properly into the workings of the music industry.

   2025 June 14, Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, “James Blake’s fight against ‘free music’”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 12

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see red, mist.

   the red mists of the morning