NERVOUS SYSTEM • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Nervous system

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/nˈərvəs sˈɪstəm/ Listen

adjective

Nervous adj.

1.

Possessing nerve; sinewy; strong; vigorous. "Nervous arms."

2.

Possessing or manifesting vigor of mind; characterized by strength in sentiment or style; forcible; spirited; as, a nervous writer.

3.

Of or pertaining to the nerves; seated in the nerves; as, nervous excitement; a nervous fever.

4.

Having the nerves weak, diseased, or easily excited; subject to, or suffering from, undue excitement of the nerves; easily agitated or annoyed. "Poor, weak, nervous creatures."

5.

Sensitive; excitable; timid.

6.

Apprehensive; as, a child nervous about his mother's reaction to his bad report card. "Our aristocratic class does not firmly protest against the unfair treatment of Irish Catholics, because it is nervous about the land."

Nervous fever (Med.), a low form of fever characterized by great disturbance of the nervous system, as evinced by delirium, or stupor, disordered sensibility, etc.

Nervous system (Anat.), the specialized coordinating apparatus which endows animals with sensation and volition. In vertebrates it is often divided into three systems: the central, brain and spinal cord; the peripheral, cranial and spinal nerves; and the sympathetic. See Brain, Nerve, Spinal cord, under Spinal, and Sympathetic system, under Sympathetic.

Nervous temperament, a condition of body characterized by a general predominance of mental manifestations.

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Etymology of 'Nervous system'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Nervous system" Quotes from Famous Books

... Champlain, it was not from the burden of years and natural decay, but from the touch of disease in the period of life's full vigor in its midway course, that mental activity was restrained. When, besides the inflictions of a racked nervous system, the author suffered in addition a malady of the eyes, which limited him, as he says, to intervals of five minutes for reading or writing, when it did not wholly preclude them, we may well marvel ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... in the fetus. In the adult the liver is the chief accumulatory organ. Arsenic, which in the mother elects to accumulate in the liver, is in the fetus stored up in the skin; copper accumulates in the fetal liver, central nervous system, and sometimes in the skin; lead which is found specially in the maternal liver, but also in the skin, has been observed in the skin, liver, nervous centers, and elsewhere in the fetus. The frequent presence ...

— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Stedman, "I'm afraid to go near that cable. It's like playing with a live wire. My nervous system won't stand many more such shocks as those they gave ...

— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... what cool obstinacy he adhered to everything he had once assumed, and what a cold selfishness lay at the bottom of his character, I felt a satisfaction in the thought that he had a wife who must sometimes give a start to his blood and a stir to his nervous system." The feeling which betrays itself in this passage makes a still bolder and more amusing exhibit in one that follows: "The true way to see these people was to meet them all together, as I did once at dinner at Godwin's, and once at a convocation or 'Saturday Night Club' at Hunt's, when they felt ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... had proved inadequate to prevent their breach, their outraged relics had prompted the victim to despair and die. Intellectual development and reasoning powers had not availed one moment against inclination and self-will, and only survived in the involuntary murmurs of a disordered nervous system. All this had utterly overthrown that satisfaction in herself and her own moral qualities in which Miss Fennimore had always lived; she had become sensible of the deep flaws in all that she had admired in her own ...

— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

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