To whip one’s opponent; to make a big commotion.

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1825.  If my New York master only had hold o’ him; he’d make the feathers fly, I reck—hem—I believe.—John Neal, ‘Brother Jonathan,’ i. 94.

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1845.  “She better not come a cavortin’ ’bout me with any of her rantankerous carryin’s on this mornin’, for I aint in no humour nohow!” and he made a threatening gesture with his head, as much as to say he’d make the fur fly if she did.—W. T. Thompson, ‘Chronicles of Pineville,’ p. 178 (Phila.).

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1846.  I throwed the licks into him right and left, and I made the fur fly, I tell you.—W. T. Porter, ed., ‘A Quarter Race in Kentucky,’ etc., p. 94.

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1853.  Mr. Editor, if you would larrup some of your neighbours a little, and make their fur fly, they would let you alone.—Daily Morning Herald, St. Louis, March 4.

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1855.  The money would have to be planked right down on the nail, and the hair would fly somewhere.—Seba Smith, ‘Major Jack Downing,’ p. 437 (1860).

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1862.  He had been all summer buildin a hull lot of iron plated monsters, and ef the war didn’t come to an end too soon, they would make the fur fly.—‘Major Jack Downing’s Letters,’ Nov. 22.

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1888.  

        There may be a few, perhaps, who fail
  To see it in quite this light;
But when the fur flies I had rather be
  The outside dog in the fight.
Mrs. Custer, ‘Tenting on the Plains,’ p. 257.    

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1888.  Wait until the National Convention, and you will see the fur fly from the Cleveland hide.—Denver Republican, Feb. 29 (Farmer).

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