air one's grievances
Complain publicly, as in Jane was afraid to complain at work but freely aired her grievances at home. This figurative exposure to the open air is far from new; to air one's opinions or ideas dates from the early 1800s, and the precise idiom appears in James Joyce's Ulysses (1922).
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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