Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Having the nervous system weakened or enfeebled.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Affected by a tremor, or by a nervous disease; weakened; overcome by some violent influence or sensation; shocked.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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In search of refuge for what the great naturalist John Muir called America's "tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people," you could do about as well on the interstate.
On The Brink 2008
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In an hour, having concocted some stew and baked his damper, the single-handed nerve-shaken, old sailor set sail, and I knew him no more.
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In shallow water, too, fish are chased until they become so exhausted and nerve-shaken that they partially bury themselves in the sand, or endeavour to elude observation by concealing themselves beneath stone or coral, or by remaining passive among seaweed, trusting, no doubt, to protective tints and assimilation with their surroundings.
Tropic Days 2003
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Hildreth was quite nerve-shaken, and so was Darrie.
Tramping on Life Kemp, Harry, 1883-1960 1922
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Hildreth was quite nerve-shaken, and so was Darrie.
Tramping on Life An Autobiographical Narrative Harry Kemp 1921
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Similarly, when our men come in from the morning watch nerve-shaken and chilled to the bone, as they often are, and they must get asleep in five minutes, it is necessary that they should receive a shot of medicine which happens to be called rum.
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This aerial electricity must have wonderful curative properties for certain disorders, and I wonder that physicians do not more often advise for nerve-shaken, over-civilised people a sojourn in these regions.
Janey Canuck in the West Emily Ferguson 1910
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In an hour, having concocted some stew and baked his damper, the single-handed nerve-shaken, old sailor set sail, and I knew him no more.
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A wiry, slight man though a real "shellback," one who had been steeped in and saturated with every sea, was "giving the sea best," nerve-shaken, so he said -- and yet sailing a cutter with but 3 or 4 inches of free board "single-handed."
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In shallow water, too, fish are chased until they become so exhausted and nerve-shaken that they partially bury themselves in the sand, or endeavour to elude observation by concealing themselves beneath stone or coral, or by remaining passive among seaweed, trusting, no doubt, to protective tints and assimilation with their surroundings.
Tropic Days 1887
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