Word.ws English Dictionary

collywobbles

Syllables: col·ly·wob·bles/ˈkɒlɪwɒb(ə)lz/US/ˈkɑliˌwɑb(ə)lz/

collywobbles noun: a stomach ache or an upset stomach.

Noun

the collywobbles pl (plural only)

  1. (UK, humorous, informal, plural, plural-only) A stomach ache or an upset stomach.
    • Petunia’s off school today with a touch of the collywobbles.
    • Collywobbles, the gripes.[1823, [Francis Grose]; Pierce Egan, “Collywobbles”, in Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, […], London: […] [Samuel] Hooper and [Henry] Wigstead, […], →OCLC
  2. (UK, broadly, humorous, informal, plural, plural-only) Anxiety, fear, uneasiness.
    • I don’t like walking through the forest at night. It gives me the collywobbles.
    • This business of getting Bill educated has just about given me the collywobbles. You wouldn't think to look at the boy, that he could possibly be such a tragic misfit in school.1943, Mary Ruth Sandifer, American Lay Opinion of the Progressive School, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, →OCLC, page 21
    Synonyms:
    butterflies, butterflies in one’s stomach, creeps, heebie-jeebies, willies

collywobbles meaning in Bengali

collywobbles in Bengali

পেটে অস্বস্তি, গুড়গুড় শব্দ

Examples of collywobbles in a sentence

  • "I deeply regret," answered Liza, "but my royal 'ighness 'as got the collywobbles."1897, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter 3, in Liza of Lambeth, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published [1921], →OCLC...
  • And while he was dressing himself as quickly as he could the prefect said: / ― We must pack off to Brother Michael because we have the collywobbles!1916, James Joyce, chapter I, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC, page 20:
  • A very different thing this, I can tell you, from running round dosing people for the collywobbles.1917, Henry Handel Richardson, chapter V, in Australia Felix, part III, New York, N.Y.: W[illiam] W[arder] Norton & Co., →OCLC, page 260:

Synonyms of collywobbles

All synonyms of collywobbles

Origin of collywobbles

Probably from colic (“severe pains that grip the abdomen”) + wobble (“unsteady motion”). Alternatively, it has been suggested that the word derives from colly (“coal dust”) (in the sense of someone becoming ill from breathing in such dust), or that it is a corruption of cholera.

Words formed from collywobbles

Questions about collywobbles

What does collywobbles mean?
Collywobbles means a stomach ache or an upset stomach.
What is collywobbles in Bengali?
Collywobbles in Bengali is পেটে অস্বস্তি, গুড়গুড় শব্দ. See Collywobbles meaning in Bengali.
How do you use collywobbles in a sentence?
"I deeply regret," answered Liza, "but my royal 'ighness 'as got the collywobbles."
What part of speech is collywobbles?
Collywobbles is a noun.
How do you pronounce collywobbles?
Collywobbles is pronounced /ˈkɒlɪwɒb(ə)lz/ (UK).

Words near collywobbles in the dictionary

  1. collywest
  2. Collyweston
  3. Collyweston slate
  4. Collyweston slates
  5. collywobbled
  6. collywobbles
  7. Colm
  8. Colma
  9. colmado
  10. Colman
  11. Colmar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: collywobbles (page history and authors); collywobbles (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-collywobbles.wav.

Cite this entry: “collywobbles.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/collywobbles. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.