nerve-wreck

English

Noun

nerve-wreck (plural nerve-wrecks)

1. Alternative form of nerve rack
   • 1908, The Lancet, page 410:

     It stands not far under these circumstances from the lunatic asylum and leaves a memory of nerve-wreck, or even of cowardice, which does not minister to self-respect.

   • 1920, Martin Birnbaum, Oscar Wilde: Fragments and Memories, page 15:

     The result as we saw it was a terrible one, and we could fancy the nerve-wreck of Charles Baudelaire, before the bow snapped, from the ravaged picture before us.

   • 2003, Achife Francis, The Priest: Nil, →ISBN, page 1:

     Plunging deep in trauma and nerve-wreck after surviving a Nazi' shelling in one of the felled London streets.

2. A person who is debilitated by stress.
   • 1911, The Literary Digest - Volume 42, page 684:

     Behold the triumph of hypnotic mystification by the might of which the vacuous become profound and the flabby-willed nerve-wreck a heroine of dauntless faith!

   • 1978, Harford Montgomery Hyde, Solitary in the ranks: Lawrence of Arabia as airman and private soldier:

     It wouldn't happen again, for not one in a hundred of your Squadron-Leaders is a nerve-wreck.

   • 1979, Anwar Sadat, Raphael Israeli, The public diary of President Sadat - Volume 3, →ISBN, page 1041:

     He was a nerve-wreck.