pins and needles
4
4.9
- idiom
- Informal
:
nerviosismo
- And now the audience is on pins and needles and the woman's like.
- waiting on pins and needles
- sitting on pins and needles
And so we were all like, they're kind of like on pins and needles.
- And so we were all like, they're kind of like on pins and needles.
Examples
-
Is it a pins-and-needles kind of feeling?
-
These city people are on pins and needles, without their therapists, and I'm needed.
Fiction book (2000) -
I have been waiting on pins and needles for this moment because I have something so extraordinary to share with you, for you.
-
Because I, your father, am meanwhile sitting here on pins and needles expecting.
Fiction book (1992) -
Everybody is crowded around the scene, on pins and needles.
Fiction book (1995) -
I've got pins and needles.
-
I was on pins and needles until I heard footsteps on the stairway hours and hours later, and opened the door to see Beau rushing up the stairs, taking two steps at a time.
Fiction book (1995) -
She'd been on pins and needles for months—would the shipment arrive, would Diego come through?
Fiction book (1999) -
I know I'm on pins and needles every minute of every day since I filed my commutation papers, but don't nobody say one god-blessed single solitary word, good or bad, for three months.
Fiction book (1992) -
Everyone in the waiting room was on pins and needles as they anticipated the results of the examination.
Synonyms
1
6.0
A nervous, restless state when a person makes small sudden movements
Antonyms
How Anxious
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal constituents 'pins' and 'needles' evoke a prickling physical sensation, and the idiom extends that bodily image to describe anxious anticipation; this gives a detectable metaphorical link. However, the specific meaning 'nervous anxiety or eager anticipation' is a figurative extension not fully predictable from the parts alone, so a B1 learner who only knows the words may not reliably infer the idiomatic sense without prior exposure.
Etymology
Pins and needles uses the same image of many tiny pins or needles pricking the skin to show how your body feels when you are very nervous or excited. So the phrase means 'feeling tense, restless, or nervous while you wait'.