the heebie-jeebies
feelings of anxiety and fear
TRANSLATION
the heebie-jeebies = Angstgefühle, Gänsehaut, Schaudern --- GOOGLE INDEX the heebie-jeebies: approximately 900,000 Google hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
Salma Hayek: The Thought of Botox Gives Me the HEEBIE-JEEBIES
(US Weekly magazine)
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My parents have done a great job in making me feel secure, but they should have prepared me a bit earlier to be street smart, instead of giving me the HEEBIE-JEEBIES.
(New York Times)
(US Weekly magazine)
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My parents have done a great job in making me feel secure, but they should have prepared me a bit earlier to be street smart, instead of giving me the HEEBIE-JEEBIES.
(New York Times)
Did you
know?
heebie-jeebies
noun, slang
- a state of nervous fear or anxiety
(Oxford Dictionary)
---
Heebie-jeebies is an American English idiom that describes a feeling of anxiety that is usually related to something specific. For example, "That movie gave me the heebie-jeebies." A common British equivalent is "abdabs" or "screaming abdabs."
While we would enjoy satisfying your curiosity about the origin of such a strange expression as abdabs, even the most experienced etymologists have yet to figure this one out.
Heebie-jeebies is a so-called reduplicate, which are words that repeat a syllable or other linguistic element exactly or with a slight change. Common reduplicates are mumbo-jumbo (nonsense language) and hocus-pocus (magic).
The term heebie-jeebies is widely attributed to American cartoonist Billy DeBeck. The first printed citation, where it is spelled with a "y," is in one of Beck's cartoons from 1923 that was published in the New York American:
"You dumb ox – why don't you get that stupid look off of your face – you give me the heeby jeebys!"
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SYNONYMS
anxiety, nervousness, the chills, the creeps, the jitters, the screaming abdabs, the shakes, the shivers, the sweats, the willies
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SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"Just the thought of going to the top of the Empire State Building gives me the heebie-jeebies."
noun, slang
- a state of nervous fear or anxiety
(Oxford Dictionary)
---
Heebie-jeebies is an American English idiom that describes a feeling of anxiety that is usually related to something specific. For example, "That movie gave me the heebie-jeebies." A common British equivalent is "abdabs" or "screaming abdabs."
While we would enjoy satisfying your curiosity about the origin of such a strange expression as abdabs, even the most experienced etymologists have yet to figure this one out.
Heebie-jeebies is a so-called reduplicate, which are words that repeat a syllable or other linguistic element exactly or with a slight change. Common reduplicates are mumbo-jumbo (nonsense language) and hocus-pocus (magic).
The term heebie-jeebies is widely attributed to American cartoonist Billy DeBeck. The first printed citation, where it is spelled with a "y," is in one of Beck's cartoons from 1923 that was published in the New York American:
"You dumb ox – why don't you get that stupid look off of your face – you give me the heeby jeebys!"
---
SYNONYMS
anxiety, nervousness, the chills, the creeps, the jitters, the screaming abdabs, the shakes, the shivers, the sweats, the willies
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"Just the thought of going to the top of the Empire State Building gives me the heebie-jeebies."
