nail biter
nail biter noun: one who habitually bites or chews their fingernails.
Noun
nail biter (plural nail biters)
- One who habitually bites or chews their fingernails.
- But Victor did not reveal any behavior disorder, did not pick his nose, did not suck his thumb, was not even a nail biter.1957 March 7, Vladimir Nabokov, chapter 4.3, in Pnin, Heinemann, page 90
- A situation which causes anxiety, suspense, nervousness or discomfort.
- It was a real nail biter waiting for the test results.
- 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.2018 August 8, Frank Bruni, “A Nail-Biter in Ohio Is a Democratic Triumph”, in New York Times
- Synonyms:
- cliffhanger
Synonyms of nail biter
Forms of nail biter
| plural | nail biters |
|---|---|
| alternative form | nailbiter |
| alternative form | nail-biter |
Questions about nail biter
- What does nail biter mean?
- Nail biter means one who habitually bites or chews their fingernails.
- What part of speech is nail biter?
- Nail biter is a noun.
- What is the plural of nail biter?
- The plural of nail biter is nail biters.
Words near nail biter in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nail biter (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-nail biter.ogg.
Cite this entry: “nail biter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nail_biter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.