Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
to sweat bullets

to sweat bullets

5 8.8
To feel very nervous before something difficult or scary
  • idiom
  • Informal
translation icon : estar muy ansioso
  • It's like 100 freaking degrees in here, I'm sweating bullets.

But Carl would never stop to think that yo, if I had to edit the TGIM, I'd be sweating bullets.

Examples

  • Duke, sweating bullets, stares at the hitchhiker in the rearview mirror.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Whether they are or not, he must be sweating bullets trying to figure out what tomorrow night will have in store.

    Blog text (12)

  • I start sweating bullets if I have to tell someone there won't be someone out for two days.

    Blog text (10)

  • My heart was beating like a jackhammer, I was sweating bullets, and I felt for sure that I was having a heart attack.

    Blog text (2)

  • Marti watches him, sweating bullets, wondering if he'll live long enough to get them on the ground.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • Crump and Nattie have got to be sweating bullets about now.

    Blog text (23)

  • Rubio set things up brilliantly, and the Obama camp was sweating bullets.

    Blog text (3)

  • He had one of the most relaxed stage presences I'd ever seen. I, on the other hand, was sweating bullets.

    Academic text (2011)

  • At times, I actually became physically ill—sweating bullets, shaking, and crying through sleepless nights.

    Blog text (34)

  • When I heard the news about the upcoming exam, I started to sweat bullets from anxiety.

Synonyms

to sweat bricks
vsto sweat bullets
  • Informal
9.9

To feel very nervous while waiting for something important

is reserved for nervousness about something difficult or frightening
to quake in one's boots
vsto sweat bullets
  • Informal
8.9

To feel very frightened and shake with fear

focuses on anxious anticipation of a difficult or frightening event

Antonyms

confidence
456 2.1

A belief that you can do something well

How Nervous

to panic
272 2.3
to sweat bullets
  • Informal
5 8.8
nervous
∞ 1.3
anxiousness
3 3.8
to worry
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

sweat bullets infinitive
sweat bullets past
sweat bullets past participle
sweating bullets present participle
sweats bullets third person singular

Morphology

sweat + bullets

The constituent 'sweat' clearly evokes perspiration, so a learner can infer heavy sweating, but 'bullets' is a metaphorical intensifier whose contribution to meaning ('extremely nervous') is not literally predictable from knowing 'bullets'. The expression is hyperbolic and language-specific in its imagery, so its full pragmatic sense (nervous/anxious) is only partially recoverable without exposure.

Etymology

Sweat bullets comes from a strong picture: someone is sweating so much that the sweat seems to fly off like bullets. One popular idea says this image shows great fear or worry, so the phrase means 'very nervous'.