[Idiom] She started screaming on the phone and hung up on me.

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beachboy

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Do natives still use the expression "to hang up on somebody" when it comes to talking on the smartphone?

In anger, she started screaming at me on the phone and hung up on me. (I came up with this sentence myself)
 
Yes. Disconnected is also possible.

The expression originated when receivers hung on hooks mounted on the side of the telephone. Very few such phones have been used for eighty or ninety years.
 
You'll also hear "put the phone down on someone". That's from the days of Bakelite phones where the earpiece/mouthpiece hung horizontally across the base of the phone so you literally put that part of the phone down on the other part.

As far as I know, no one has come up with a decent phrase for the unsatisfying act of angrily pressing a little button on a touchscreen in order to disconnect a call when you've had enough!
 
We don't use the phrase "put down the phone" that way in American English — it just means you set it on a flat surface. I do recall calling my impossible Aunt Jean back a number of times to tell her "I'm sorry. The call got disconnected." I failed to add "… because I hit the 'hang up' button'"!
 
Do natives still use the expression "to hang up on somebody" when it comes to talking on the smartphone?

In anger, she started screaming at me on the phone and hung up on me. (I came up with this sentence myself)

Do you need on the phone there?
 
80 or 90 years? Kitchen phones that hang on a hook were common much more recently.
 
80 or 90 years? Kitchen phones that hang on a hook were common much more recently.
I was thinking of phones with a distinct, projecting hook. Like this:
104.jpg
 
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