Often in the conversations of people you can hear "Well and Fury!" Or "Look, this is a real fury!". From the context of the conversation it is obvious that by this definition people usually call such women who, in spiteful insanity, are capable of demolishing everything on their way, including various obstacles, and it is better not to fall under their hot hand at such moments.
Furies - who is this?
The goddess, distinguished by a frenzied riot, irresistible rage - that's who such a fury. The definition of the word makes it clear that it comes from the Latin Furiae, furire, which means "rampage, anger." Hence it is clear that in a figurative sense people mean evil, terrible in their anger and revenge of women - after all, it was the creatures of the female, and not the masculine gender, who personified the terrible punishment for the committed sins.
Furies in mythology
These creatures came to us from ancient Roman mythology, and the Romans borrowed them from the Greeks, who called the fury the Erinium, and later the Eumenides. And, if the Romans furies - the goddesses of revenge, then the literal translation from Greek gives a very different definition - the venerable, the merciful. Where did such differences arise in the designation of this concept?
Furies in Roman mythology
Violent, bloodthirsty, insatiable, never resting terrible creatures with bloodshot faces, always pursuing a person who committed an unforgivable act - that's who fury in Roman mythology. Since the Romans borrowed the entire pantheon of the gods from the Greeks almost literally, especially without going into the subtleties and nuances of details and definitions, the furies were endowed with the same functions and characteristics of characters that the early Greeks appropriated to them. Later mocking atheistic Romans furies, as well as our contemporaries, called women who flee into a raging fury.
Furies in Greek mythology
But among the ancient Greeks, their irrepressible Erinnia evolved to eumenides, personifying a fair and impartial court. According to Greek mythology, the goddesses of revenge were born during the first perfect gods crime - when Kronos, who decided to seize power, killed his father Uranus, from the drops of the blood of the latter, and the eumenides appeared. Initially, the Greeks believed that there were very many of them - up to thirty thousand, but then Aeschylus in his tragedies brought only three - Tisiphon (not getting tired of revenge), Alekto (who can not forgive) and Meger (evil envious).
The goddesses, who are always thirsting for revenge for murder - these are the furies in Ancient Greece. Pallas Athena persuaded Erinius to settle forever in Ancient Greece, assuring them that the inhabitants would pay homage to them, as one of the most respected goddesses, and Erynia relented. Later they personified a strict and impartial trial of suspects in terrible deeds and were called eumenides (venerable, merciful). Aeschylus generally identified them with Moira, the goddess of fate.
What do furies look like?
Scary old women with hair in the form of snakes, bared teeth and stretched out to the culprit with clawed hands - this is what furies look like in ancient Greek mythology, and indeed, the vengefulness and thirst for murder can not look attractive, the envious woman is not gentle and feminine, so these images repel, inspire horror and disgust. When they say that someone behaves like a fury, in everyday life, people are not inclined to give this image positive features.
A woman of a fury is, as a rule, a person who does not know how to behave in the hands, bringing down all his negative emotions to those around him, destroying everything in his path indiscriminately. In fact, in our current understanding, this is a hysterical. And hysteria is a mental disorder, and the same ancient Greeks and Romans knew about it. Plato called hysteria "rabies of the uterus." Looks like these women are extremely unattractive, as evidenced by the winged expression "suddenly became a fury", when seemingly outwardly calm woman suddenly waved her wand to a furious cargos.