Jittery means nervous and shaky. Feel jittery, a jittery market, jittery hands.
It is physical as well as emotional — caffeine and adrenaline both produce it, and the shaking is real. Of markets it means prone to sudden moves on small news. Note the jitters, meaning nerves; and that jitter in engineering means small irregular variation in timing.
1adjectivejitteryNervous and shaky.
“I always feel jittery before I have to speak in public.”
jittery is a state of nerves.
From jitter + -y.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA