tremulous

UK/ˈtɹɛmjʊləs/US/ˈtɹɛmjuləs/

adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,055 of 15,258neutralformal · an editor’s judgement

Tremulous means trembling slightly with nerves or weakness. A voice that will not hold quite steady.

Voices and hands are its usual subjects, and a tremulous smile is one that might collapse into tears. The word is formal and literary, and it carries sympathy rather than criticism. Light and water can be tremulous too, meaning quivering. The related everyday words are trembling and shaky, and a tremor is the medical noun for an involuntary shake.

Definitions of tremulous

1adjectivetremulousShaking slightly from nervousness or weakness.C1
“She answered in a tremulous voice.”

Where it comes from

Tremulous, tremor and tremble are three forms of one Latin verb. Tremō meant to tremble or shake, and its descendants came into English by three separate doors.

Proto-Indo-European
*trem-
Latin
tremulus
English, today
tremulous

Built from

tremō · Latin — to tremble, shake

From Latin tremulus, from tremō (“to tremble, shake”) + -ulus. a doublet of tremor and tremble. by surface analysis, tremulate + -ous.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire

First appears in chapter 17 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

tremulous in the wild

We are in a period of clamor, of bewilderment, of an almost tremulous unrest.
Walter Weyl
Set in the mid-1960s, the drama serial follows the fortunes of characters from Lollywood's golden era and their tremulous journey till the turn of this century.
Mein Sitara
In Treat Her Right, Champagne's "tremulous slide guitar" provided part of the band's distinctive quality, as Nashville music journalist Robert K.
David Champagne (musician)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the tremō family

tremendous

tremulous — used about once every 33,333 pages · #14,055 · point at the bar for the others

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