nail-biting
nail-biting adjective: that causes nervous anticipation or suspense.
Adjective
nail-biting (comparative more nail-biting, superlative most nail-biting)
- That causes nervous anticipation or suspense.
- Yet again the phrase does not do justice to the nail-biting 750-mile journey through what is left of the ramparts put up by Genghis Khan, mountain ranges, arid plains, alien landscapes and alien people, stopping at little wooden stations identical to those the length and breadth of Russia but with...2004, Geoffrey Elliott, “On the Road Again”, in From Siberia with Love: A Story of Exile, Revolution and Cigarettes, Methuen Publishing, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 203
- He said recent nail-biting finals had renewed interest in the end-of-season contests, after a series of one-sided beltings earlier this decade.2009 August 24, Matt Johnston, “Race for the eight as AFL finals approach”, in Herald Sun
Forms of nail-biting
| comparative | more nail-biting |
|---|---|
| superlative | most nail-biting |
| alternative form | nailbiting |
Words formed from nail-biting
Questions about nail-biting
- What does nail-biting mean?
- Nail-biting means that causes nervous anticipation or suspense.
- What part of speech is nail-biting?
- Nail-biting is an adjective.
Words near nail-biting in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nail-biting (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)-Sapaa-nail-biting.wav.
Cite this entry: “nail-biting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nail-biting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.