Dictionary

nebbishy en · ADJ

Etymology

Etymology tree English nebbish Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Germanic *-gaz Proto-West Germanic *-g Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English nebbishy From nebbish + -y.

Meanings

1. Resembling or characteristic of a nebbish.
   • As we have seen, one of the intellectual architects of that war was Sayyid Qutb, a nebbishy Egyptian writer with a Hitler mustache who arrived in the placid town of Greeley, Colorado, in 1949 to attend college. 2011, Peter L. Bergen, The Longest War:
   • Jeff Johnson's nebbishy Blanche, for example, is a complete comic character, a demented Dorothy (a la Martin Short) who can write her way back to Kansas. 1988 August 26, Lawrence Bommer, “The Book of Blanche”, in Chicago Reader:
   • Where American Jewish men contend with stereotypes of being oversexed, needy, nebbishy and neurotic (like Woody Allen, boo hiss), Jewish women are cast as withholding, bossy, exotic, and materialistic (like Fran Drescher, which honestly? Goals). 2019 August 20, Fancy Feast, “On Being a Fetish”, in Jewish Currents, number Summer 2019, archived from the original on 08 Aug 2020:

Forms

Synonyms

nebbishlike