nebbish

noun neb·bish \ ˈne-bish \

|Updated on: 17 Jul 2018

Editor's Note: Did You Know?

Definition of nebbish

: a timid, meek, or ineffectual person

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nebbishy

play \ˈne-bi-shē\ adjective

nebbish was our Word of the Day on 02/15/2018. Hear the podcast!

Recent Examples of nebbish from the Web

The Producers’’ on: the despondent nebbish at midlife, here named Martin.

— don aucoin, BostonGlobe.com, "‘The Closet’ plays sexual identity for old-fashioned laughs," 1 July 2018
Indeed, a nebbish nobody who didn’t look old enough to buy a bottle of wine had palmed off millions of dollars of phony Bordeaux and Burgundies to the jet set without ever having been to France.

— patrick cooke, WSJ, "Fake Wine, Old Bottles," 31 Aug. 2017
G.T. Norman *** Richard Gere gives the most annoying performance of his career - by design - in this offbeat movie about a New York nebbish swept up in big-time finance and Israeli politics.

— Philly.com, "Movies: New and Noteworthy," 28 May 2017
G.T. Norman *** Richard Gere gives the most annoying performance of his career - by design - in this offbeat movie about a New York nebbish swept up in big-time finance and Israeli politics.

— Philly.com, "Movies: New and Noteworthy," 28 May 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'nebbish.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

From what I read …. it looks like Pa isn't anything like the nebbish Ma is always making him out to be…. Sounds like poor Pa got a bum rap, at least according to a 1951 book review that appeared in The New York Times. The unfortunate Pa unwittingly demonstrates much about the etymology of nebbish, which derives from the Yiddish nebekh, meaning "poor" or "unfortunate." As you might expect for a timid word like nebbish, the journey from Yiddish to English wasn't accomplished in a single bold leap of spelling and meaning. In its earliest English uses in the 1840s, it was spelled nebbich and used interjectionally as an expression of dismay.