nervous
- 1Feeling apprehensive, anxious, or uneasy about something that might happen or go wrong.
The nervous candidate fumbled her notes as the interview began.
He grew more nervous as the deadline approached and the work piled up.
Similaranxious, apprehensive, uneasy, tense, jittery
Note
Worry with an object: Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843) has young housekeepers "nervous on such points." Before a noun the word can color the feeling itself, as in a "nervous dread" of cold. Its opposites are calm and relaxed. The standard comparative is more nervous. Nervouser and nervousest exist but are nonstandard, so keep them out of careful writing.
- 2Easily agitated or alarmed; tense, edgy, and quick to react.
The nervous mare shied at every shadow along the trail.
Years of stress had left her nervous and easily startled.
Similarexcitable, high-strung, hypersensitive
Note
This sense names a temperament rather than a passing mood: the person or animal who startles easily. Its close neighbors are excitable, high-strung and hypersensitive. Norman B. Cole's 1928 description of "a nervous child" whose "nervous system is unstable" shows the bridge from the medical sense to character. Use it for a disposition; for worry about a particular event, the apprehensive sense is the one meant.
- 3Of, relating to, or acting on the nerves and the system they form in the body.
The doctor specializes in nervous disorders such as neuralgia.
A blow to the head can damage nervous tissue and disrupt reflexes.
Similarneurological, neural
Note
This sense survives intact in medicine: nervous system, central nervous system, nervous tissue. George Cheyne writes of "Nervous Distempers" in 1733, and a medical memoir of 1774 records a "slow nervous fever." The word classifies rather than describes emotion, and it almost always sits before a noun. A nervous disorder is a disorder of the nerves, while a nervous patient usually carries the anxious sense.
- 4Supplied with nerves; having a network of nerve fibers distributed through the tissue.
The richly nervous tissue of the fingertips makes them highly sensitive to touch.
Surgeons take care in nervous regions where dense fibers carry sensation.
Similarinnervated
- 5Of writing or literary style, forceful, vigorous and powerful.
Eighteenth-century critics admired Dryden's nervous prose, which drove each argument forward with unflagging force.
The pamphlet's nervous style lent its arguments a vigor that calmer writing would have lacked.
Note
Critics borrowed the muscle for prose. Latin nervus could already mean "energy, power," and English applied the word to writing with force and grip. It was praise. Edward Waterhous calls De Laudibus Legum Angliæ "that nervous treatise" (1663), and Frances Burney pairs it with "clear, and striking" in 1788. The sense is obsolete, so a nervous style in older criticism is a compliment, not a sign of hesitancy.
- 6Strong in sinew and muscle; brawny.
[T]here is nothing in marble equal to the Venus of Medici, for ſoftneſs and tenderneſs; as there is nothing ſo ſtrong and nervous, as the Hercules Farneſe.
1747, [Joseph] Spence, “Dial[ogue] VIII”Note
Here the sinews are admired rather than counted: strength made visible in a limb or a statue. Joseph Spence's Polymetis (1747) calls the Hercules Farnese "strong and nervous" and contrasts it with the softness of the Venus of Medici. Like the stringy-flesh sense, it is obsolete. In eighteenth-century prose, "nervous" beside "strong" means muscular, never timid.
- 7Full of sinews; containing many tough fibrous strands.
The stew was spoiled by nervous meat full of tough white strands.
He complained that the joint was nervous and stringy, scarcely fit to eat.
Note
The oldest physical sense comes straight from Latin nervōsus, "sinewy." Its root, nervus, meant sinew and tendon as well as nerve. Here the word described flesh shot through with tough strands. It is long obsolete, so a modern reader who meets "nervous meat" in an old text should hear stringy, not anxious.
- 8In botany, of a leaf or similar part: having prominent veins or nerves.
The specimen's nervous leaves bore a series of prominent parallel veins.
He labeled the fern frond as nervous, noting the strong ribs running its length.
Note
A botanist's word, built on the habit of calling a leaf's veins its nerves. Philip Miller's The Gardeners Dictionary (1733) describes the leaves of Cannacorus as "long and nervous," meaning ribbed with prominent veins. The usage is obsolete. In botanical description the Latinate nervose has taken its place, which also spares the leaf from sounding anxious.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English nervous, from Latin nervōsus ("nervous; sinewy; vigorous"), from nervus ("nerve; sinew; strength") plus the suffix -ōsus meaning "full of." The English word can be seen as nerve + -ous.