as nervous as a witch

English

Adjective

(as) nervous as a witch (not comparable)

1. (US, especially Northeastern US) Very nervous or restless.
   • 1871, Donald Kennedy, Kennedy on diseases of the skin, page 94:

     The nerves often get clogged up, or choked up, both inside and outside: they get clogged up by humours settling on them, [...] and you become as nervous as a witch. Then again, the nervous fluid. what used to be called the animal spirits, or the marrow of the nerve, get thick and clogged; and all obstruction in it must be forced out.

   • 2021 November 5, Henry Pettit, A Twentieth Century Idealist, Good Press:

     […] "a pinch always makes me start up as nervous as a witch, and I never could talk sense during an electric storm. I feel nervous now just to think of it."

References

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.

Further reading

• Bartlett Jere Whiting (1989) Modern Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, page 691:

  [...] as nervous as a witch. 1930 MGEberhart While (NY) 292: I was as nervous as a witch. 1935 FErskine Naked (L) 93: She's as flighty as a witch. 1935 TWilder Heaven's Wolf (NY) 127: They're nervous as witches. 1943 EDaly Nothing Can Rescue (NY 1963) 52: Louise is as nervous as a witch. 1962 FDennis Genius (NY) 211: I'm nervous as a witch. 1962 LEgan Borrowed (NY DBC) 118: She was as nervous as a witch. (Why as a witch?) 1965 UCrutiss Wasp (NY DBC) 46: You're as jumpy as a witch. TW 407(1).