Full of (piss|pith) and vinegar

Re: the expression:

"Full of (piss|pith) and vinegar"

Are both correct/acceptable? Is one preferred?

Solution 1:

There are no appearances of "pith and vinegar" in COCA.

Plotting an Ngram of "piss and vinegar" against "pith and vinegar" shows a similar result; "pith and vinegar" just isn't there. It doesn't mean that "pith and vinegar" is incorrect; it just means that writers prefer to capture the full flavor of the idiom.

(It appears "piss and vinegar" itself is surprisingly recent origin; this source dates its first appearance in the corpus to 1938, in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath.")

Solution 2:

The OED lists the piss version only. Also, it's far more common on the web. I've never heard the pith version.