fiddlestrings

She had parted from the young man lightly, but she stood on the doorstep with nerves taut as fiddlestrings.

Maid in Waiting 2004

My nerves became all fiddlestrings, so at last I took up the works of Mr. Cowper, and tried to calm myself.

On Forsyte 'Change 2004

It was said that he had killed his wife in a fit of jealousy, and made fiddlestrings of her intestines; and that the devil had composed a sonata for him in a dream, as he formerly did for Tartini.

The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 Various

I have never feared for you, my boy, even when things l-looked blackes '; but if you don' fin 'Bill Thomson somewhere, some time, an' choke him an 'tear his win'pipe to fiddlestrings, you ain't got a drop of British blood in yer whole carcass!

Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest Pauline Elizabeth 1902

His nerves on that occasion had been worn to fiddlestrings with all the fuss and fiasco of planning the tableaux, and thus fancying himself in love had been just the last straw.

Queen Lucia 1903

I could hear it in the twang o 'the fiddlestrings, a-playin' the boys inter harness, in the clerk's voice a-callin 'the roll, in the speaker's gavil a-knockin' fur order.

The Heart of Old Hickory and Other Stories of Tennessee 1895

There was another sound outside, as of fiddlestrings being twanged by the finger, and, as the boys hastily formed up in two lines down the centre of the room and the Miss Mutlows and Dulcie prepared themselves for the curtsey of state, there came in a little fat man, with mutton-chop whiskers and a white face, upon which was written an unalterable conviction that his manner and deportment were perfection itself.

Vice Versa or A Lesson to Fathers F. Anstey 1895

There is a vast deal of ugly music in "Salome," -- music that offends the ear and rasps the nerves like fiddlestrings played on by a coarse file.

Chapters of Opera Being historical and critical observations and records concerning the lyric drama in New York from its earliest days down to the present time Henry Edward Krehbiel 1888

But when the/signor della casa/has neither kind look nor word for me, what can I do but grow desperate, fret myself to fiddlestrings, and be a torment to society in every direction?

Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle 1883

Thought and talk drowned by a scream; nerves worried into fiddlestrings.

Our Friend the Charlatan George Gissing 1880