Mild, agitated apprehension.
Mild, agitated apprehension — jitters, fidgeting, and restlessness, often before a specific event.
The most physical and embodied of the everyday set: it names the somatic signs (butterflies, fidgeting, restlessness) more than the cogitation, and is typically short-term and event-bound (nervous before a test, a flight, a first date). Distinct from the sustained mental fretting of worry, the anguished diffuse anxiety, the vaguer unease, and the pointed doubt of misgiving. Low on the fear scale — well below dread, alarm, panic, or terror.
Built on nervous (late 14c., “of the sinews,” from Latin nervus “sinew, nerve”). The emotional senses are late: “suffering disorder of the nerves” (1734), then “restless, agitated, easily agitated” (1740).
A notable reversal: in the 1630s nervous meant “vigorous, strong” (a compliment); the “weak, easily agitated” sense grew out of the medical “disorder of the nervous system” sense, and its popular use as a euphemism for “mental” pushed the medical field to coin “neurological.” “Nervous wreck” (1862), “nervous breakdown” (1866). No recent-generation shift is sourced.