"nail biter" meaning in English

See nail biter in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-nail biter.ogg [Australia] Forms: nail biters [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} nail biter (plural nail biters)
  1. (literal) One who habitually bites or chews their fingernails.
    Sense id: en-nail_biter-en-noun-uhdONJ3U
  2. (figurative) A situation which causes anxiety, suspense, nervousness or discomfort. Tags: figuratively Synonyms: cliffhanger, nailbiter, nail-biter
    Sense id: en-nail_biter-en-noun-hTtToY2Z Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 39 61

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for nail biter meaning in English (2.1kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "nail biters",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "nail biter (plural nail biters)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "One who habitually bites or chews their fingernails."
      ],
      "id": "en-nail_biter-en-noun-uhdONJ3U",
      "links": [
        [
          "habitually",
          "habitually"
        ],
        [
          "chews",
          "chews"
        ],
        [
          "fingernails",
          "fingernails"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "literal",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(literal) One who habitually bites or chews their fingernails."
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "39 61",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "It was a real nail biter waiting for the test results.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2018 August 8, Frank Bruni, “A Nail-Biter in Ohio Is a Democratic Triumph”, in New York Times",
          "text": "And in a shockingly misogynistic ad, Republicans placed an image of O’Connor in a huddle of three supposedly nightmarish mascots of liberalism, all women: Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton. O’Connor absorbed all of this and still turned the race into a nail-biter.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A situation which causes anxiety, suspense, nervousness or discomfort."
      ],
      "id": "en-nail_biter-en-noun-hTtToY2Z",
      "links": [
        [
          "situation",
          "situation"
        ],
        [
          "anxiety",
          "anxiety"
        ],
        [
          "suspense",
          "suspense"
        ],
        [
          "nervousness",
          "nervousness"
        ],
        [
          "discomfort",
          "discomfort"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figurative) A situation which causes anxiety, suspense, nervousness or discomfort."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "cliffhanger"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "41 59",
          "word": "nailbiter"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "41 59",
          "word": "nail-biter"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-nail biter.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/54/En-au-nail_biter.ogg/En-au-nail_biter.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/En-au-nail_biter.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "nail biter"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
    "English terms with audio links"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "nail biters",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "nail biter (plural nail biters)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "One who habitually bites or chews their fingernails."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "habitually",
          "habitually"
        ],
        [
          "chews",
          "chews"
        ],
        [
          "fingernails",
          "fingernails"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "literal",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(literal) One who habitually bites or chews their fingernails."
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "It was a real nail biter waiting for the test results.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2018 August 8, Frank Bruni, “A Nail-Biter in Ohio Is a Democratic Triumph”, in New York Times",
          "text": "And in a shockingly misogynistic ad, Republicans placed an image of O’Connor in a huddle of three supposedly nightmarish mascots of liberalism, all women: Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton. O’Connor absorbed all of this and still turned the race into a nail-biter.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A situation which causes anxiety, suspense, nervousness or discomfort."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "situation",
          "situation"
        ],
        [
          "anxiety",
          "anxiety"
        ],
        [
          "suspense",
          "suspense"
        ],
        [
          "nervousness",
          "nervousness"
        ],
        [
          "discomfort",
          "discomfort"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figurative) A situation which causes anxiety, suspense, nervousness or discomfort."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "cliffhanger"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-nail biter.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/54/En-au-nail_biter.ogg/En-au-nail_biter.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/En-au-nail_biter.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "nailbiter"
    },
    {
      "word": "nail-biter"
    }
  ],
  "word": "nail biter"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). 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.