nerveless

UK/ˈnɜː(ɹ)vləs/US/ˈnɜː(ɹ)vləs/

adjectiveC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — nerve sits at #1,369Too rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Nerveless means limp and without strength, or showing no fear. Nerveless fingers.

The two senses are opposite in feeling, which makes the word genuinely ambiguous. A nerveless hand has given up and a nerveless player has not, and only context tells you which.

Definitions of nerveless

1adjectivenervelessLimp and without strength, or showing no fear.C2
“The glass fell from his nerveless fingers.”

nerveless is a quality.

Where it comes from

Proto-Indo-European
*(s)neh₁-
German
nerven
Latin
nervus — sinew
Medieval Latin
nervus — nerve
Middle English
nerve
English
nerve
English, today
nerveless

From nerve + -less. nerve Recorded since circa 1374 as Middle English nerve, from Medieval Latin nervus (“nerve”), from Latin nervus (“sinew”). a doublet of neuron and sinew. get on someone's nerves is chiefly a German nerven.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

← Vocabulary