"nervous Nellie" meaning in All languages combined

See nervous Nellie on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: nervous Nellies [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} nervous Nellie (plural nervous Nellies)
  1. (informal) A person whose personality and behavior are characterized by worry, insecurity, and timidity. Tags: informal Categories (topical): People, Personality Synonyms: jitterbug, nervous wreck, worrywart, worrier, nervous nellie, Nervous Nellie, nervous nelly, nervous Nelly, Nervous Nelly Related terms: nervous-Nellie [adjective], Alibi Ike, Dapper Dan, doubting Thomas, Gentleman Jim, gloomy Gus, good-time Charlie, plain Jane, Silent Sam

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for nervous Nellie meaning in All languages combined (2.7kB)

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      "tags": [
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      "expansion": "nervous Nellie (plural nervous Nellies)",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
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  "senses": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1925 January 19, “Gentlemen Asleep”, in Time, archived from the original on 2009-03-01",
          "text": "Political opponents doubted his capacity, referred to him as \"too nervous, too worried a little man,\" and remarked that his Senatorial colleagues used to refer to him humorously as \"Nervous Nellie.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1993 November 22, Richard Zoglin, “Hill Street Blues on Happy Juice”, in Time, TV review of \"Bakersfield P.D.\", archived from the original on 2008-04-08",
          "text": "The captain is a nervous Nellie who can't make a decision without the approval of his protective aide-de-camp.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
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        "A person whose personality and behavior are characterized by worry, insecurity, and timidity."
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      "id": "en-nervous_Nellie-en-noun-YPM1ctPj",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) A person whose personality and behavior are characterized by worry, insecurity, and timidity."
      ],
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        {
          "tags": [
            "adjective"
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          "word": "nervous-Nellie"
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        {
          "word": "Dapper Dan"
        },
        {
          "word": "doubting Thomas"
        },
        {
          "word": "Gentleman Jim"
        },
        {
          "word": "gloomy Gus"
        },
        {
          "word": "good-time Charlie"
        },
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          "word": "jitterbug"
        },
        {
          "word": "nervous wreck"
        },
        {
          "word": "worrywart"
        },
        {
          "word": "worrier"
        },
        {
          "word": "nervous nellie"
        },
        {
          "word": "Nervous Nellie"
        },
        {
          "word": "nervous nelly"
        },
        {
          "word": "nervous Nelly"
        },
        {
          "word": "Nervous Nelly"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
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  "word": "nervous Nellie"
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    {
      "word": "Alibi Ike"
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    {
      "word": "Dapper Dan"
    },
    {
      "word": "doubting Thomas"
    },
    {
      "word": "Gentleman Jim"
    },
    {
      "word": "gloomy Gus"
    },
    {
      "word": "good-time Charlie"
    },
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      "word": "plain Jane"
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          "type": "quotation"
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          "text": "The captain is a nervous Nellie who can't make a decision without the approval of his protective aide-de-camp.",
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "jitterbug"
    },
    {
      "word": "nervous wreck"
    },
    {
      "word": "worrywart"
    },
    {
      "word": "worrier"
    },
    {
      "word": "nervous nellie"
    },
    {
      "word": "Nervous Nellie"
    },
    {
      "word": "nervous nelly"
    },
    {
      "word": "nervous Nelly"
    },
    {
      "word": "Nervous Nelly"
    }
  ],
  "word": "nervous Nellie"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (ae36afe and 304864d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.