unnerving
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of unnerving
Explanation
Use the adjective unnerving to describe situations and experiences that cause you to lose your courage. No matter how brave you are, a walk alone through a cemetery at night is bound to be a little unnerving. You might find it unnerving to get a flat tire on a deserted country road at sunset, or to find yourself onstage mid-play having completely forgotten your lines. In the 1620's, the root word unnerve meant "to destroy the strength of," but by the early 1700's it came to mean "to deprive of courage."
Vocabulary lists containing unnerving
The Dead and the Gone
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Ten Words from The New York Times - June 5, 2013
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Performing a comedy routine based on her experience was unnerving, she says, as she was scared to be vulnerable about her mistakes and risk being called a fool by the audience.
From BBC • May 18, 2026
That is another unnerving parallel between today and the dot-com era, but, as Sosnick pointed out, there are important differences as well.
From MarketWatch • May 15, 2026
And long before Elon Musk put his brilliant, unnerving innovator’s creed to work, a different industry pioneer dragged the world’s entire manufacturing sector into the era of mass production, creating shock waves again and again.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 2, 2026
This combination — mass reach without institutional control — makes him both valuable and unnerving for the Democratic Party establishment.
From Salon • May 2, 2026
When the newsmen asked him to produce Seabiscuit for photo shoots, he would turn to his new groom, Whitey Allison—so called because of his unnerving white eye—and ask him to “bring the old Biscuit out.”
From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
