Nervy

//ˈnɜː.vi// adj

adj ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Having nerve; bold; brazen. US

    "It takes a nervy man to promulgate such stuff, and Ted Nelson has made a career out of being nervy."

  2. 2
    Feeling nervous, anxious or agitated. British

    "Blackpool continue to thrive on the adrenalin rush of the end-of-season shoot-out and are heading for a second Wembley date in two years after negotiating a nervy path past Birmingham."

  3. 3
    Strong; sinewy. archaic

    "And, for those simple times, his garments were / A chieftain-king's: beneath his breast, half bare, / Was hung a silver bugle, and between / His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen […]"

  4. 4
    Jittery; having unwanted signal characteristics.
Adjective
  1. 1
    offensively bold wordnet
  2. 2
    showing or requiring courage and contempt of danger wordnet
  3. 3
    being in a tense state wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
boldcheekyagitatedall nervesapprehensivebeefy

Example

More examples

"He did not remove his tricorne hat as he entered, but merely pushed it with a nervy gesture to the back of his head."

Etymology

From nerve + -y.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.