fidgety
Americanadjective
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restless; impatient; uneasy.
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nervously and excessively fussy.
Etymology
Origin of fidgety
Explanation
Someone who's fidgety is jittery, restless, or anxious. It's pretty common to be a little fidgety before a big test or a job interview. A nervous airplane passenger might be fidgety, and a young child on the same flight could be fidgety simply because she's bored and itchy to move around. Fidgety comes from fidget, "move nervously," which in the late 1600s was the fidget, or the fidgets "uneasiness," from a now-obsolete verb, fidge, "move restlessly."
Vocabulary lists containing fidgety
Freak the Mighty
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Out of the Dust
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Patina
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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.
"You have to know him. He's fidgety to begin with," Payton said.
From Barron's • Jan. 27, 2026
Yaxley-Lennon watched proceedings via a prison video link and appeared fidgety, occasionally rocking side to side.
From BBC • Apr. 11, 2025
This equipoise held for four very productive years, but there comes a moment in all love stories when one partner gets fidgety and starts to pull away.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 4, 2025
This year, impatient as ever for winter to end, I decided to skip my usual routine of fidgety calendar watching and see if I couldn’t do something to hasten spring’s arrival.
From New York Times • Mar. 16, 2024
A fidgety scholar, though: He seemed quite shy, or at the very least anxious.
From "The Mysterious Benedict Society" by Trenton Lee Stewart
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.
