Word.ws English Dictionary

nervous-nellie

nervous-nellie is the alternative spelling of nervous-Nellie.

Adjective (1) capitalized: Nervous-Nellie

Nervous-Nellie (not comparable)

  1. (alternative) Alternative spelling of nervous-Nellie.

Adjective (2) capitalized: nervous-Nellie

nervous-Nellie (not comparable)

  1. (informal) Characterized by worry or anxiety; having a weak, insecure personality.
    • Woody Allen plays his most frazzled variation on the Woody we know best: a nervous-Nellie urban neurotic kvetching his way through life as a means of avoiding it.1993, David Ansen, "Goodbye, Mr. Gibson (film review of The Man Without a Face)," Newsweek,, 30 Aug

Forms of nervous-nellie

alternative formnervous-nellie
alternative formNervous-Nellie
alternative formnervous-nelly
alternative formnervous-Nelly
alternative formNervous-Nelly

Questions about nervous-nellie

What does nervous-nellie mean?
Nervous-nellie means characterized by worry or anxiety; having a weak, insecure personality.
What is nervous-nellie the alternative spelling of?
Nervous-nellie is the alternative spelling of nervous-Nellie.
What part of speech is nervous-nellie?
Nervous-nellie is an adjective.

Words near nervous-nellie in the dictionary

  1. nervous systems
  2. nervous tissue
  3. nervous tissues
  4. nervous wreck
  5. nervous wrecks
  6. nervous-nellie
  7. nervous-nelly
  8. nervouser
  9. nervousest
  10. nervously
  11. nervousness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nervous-nellie (page history and authors); Nervous-Nellie (page history and authors); nervous-Nellie (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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Cite this entry: “nervous-nellie.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nervous-nellie. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.