"nerve-rack" meaning in English

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "nerve-racks",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "nerve-rack (plural nerve-racks)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "alt_of": [
        {
          "word": "nerve rack"
        }
      ],
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1890, Hume Nisbet, Ashes: A Tale of Two Spheres, page 235",
          "text": "For a week or two he answered airily enough, but as the time rolled on, the stereotyped replies grew forced, and the cold questions more pointed and insulting; clearly Mr. Melgarf was losing his respect once more, and showing it, until those exactly-timed visits became more the nerve-racks which they had been before.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1907, William Bittle Wells, Lute Pease, The Pacific Monthly: A Magazine of Education and Progress",
          "text": "I shouted and laughed in a wild frenzy of overspilling nerve-rack while the blood in my veins swelled and leaped to the rhythm of the wheels—I was again stealing my way along one of vagrancy's beaten paths, and the going was none too certain!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1916, George Allan England, The Golden Blight, page 44",
          "text": "John Stoem, during this time of nerve-rack and distress for Murchison, was thinking of quite other things.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Alternative form of nerve rack"
      ],
      "id": "en-nerve-rack-en-noun-Iys2SfDP",
      "links": [
        [
          "nerve rack",
          "nerve rack#English"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "alt-of",
        "alternative"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "nerve-rack"
}

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "nerve-racks",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "nerve-rack (plural nerve-racks)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "alt_of": [
        {
          "word": "nerve rack"
        }
      ],
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1890, Hume Nisbet, Ashes: A Tale of Two Spheres, page 235",
          "text": "For a week or two he answered airily enough, but as the time rolled on, the stereotyped replies grew forced, and the cold questions more pointed and insulting; clearly Mr. Melgarf was losing his respect once more, and showing it, until those exactly-timed visits became more the nerve-racks which they had been before.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1907, William Bittle Wells, Lute Pease, The Pacific Monthly: A Magazine of Education and Progress",
          "text": "I shouted and laughed in a wild frenzy of overspilling nerve-rack while the blood in my veins swelled and leaped to the rhythm of the wheels—I was again stealing my way along one of vagrancy's beaten paths, and the going was none too certain!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1916, George Allan England, The Golden Blight, page 44",
          "text": "John Stoem, during this time of nerve-rack and distress for Murchison, was thinking of quite other things.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Alternative form of nerve rack"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "nerve rack",
          "nerve rack#English"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "alt-of",
        "alternative"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "nerve-rack"
}