How to spell nervous

hear itnerv·ous/'nɜrvəs/adjectiveLong vowels

What it means: Feeling anxious or uneasy.

In a sentence: She felt nervous before her big dance performance.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as nervus or nervious.

Same family: nervousness, nervously, nerves, nervy, nerve. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Nervous comes from the Latin word "nervosus," meaning "sinewy" or "vigorous," from "nervus," meaning "sinew" or "nerve." Over time, as scientists learned more about the nervous system, the word shifted to describe feelings of anxiety or easily excited behavior, like that of a skittish horse.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

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