Nervousness is the jittery uneasy state before something. Dry mouth, fast heart, and hands that will not settle.
It is anticipation rather than fear, which is why it belongs to interviews, exams and first nights rather than to danger. Performers describe it as necessary, on the grounds that the version of you that is not nervous is also not trying. The word takes about. The adjective nervous covers both this and, in medicine, the nervous system, which is a quite separate and much older sense of the word nerve.
1nounnervousnessAn anxious, unsettled feeling before an event.
“His nervousness disappeared as soon as he started speaking.”
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)neh₁-
Proto-Indo-European
*snéh₁wr̥ — sinew, tendon
Latin
nervōsus — nervous; sinewy; energetic, vigorous
Middle English
nervous — composed of or incorporating nerves
English
nervous
English, today
nervousness
Built from
From nervous + -ness. nervous comes from Middle English nervous (“composed of or incorporating nerves”), from Latin nervōsus (“nervous; sinewy; energetic, vigorous”), from nervus (“nerve; muscle; sinew, tendon; (figuratively) energy, power; nerve; force, strength, vigour”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European snéh₁wr̥ (“sinew, tendon”)) + -ōsus. The English word is analysable as nerve + ous.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA