Worrywart

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Origin

"Worry wart," meaning "a person who worries or frets incessantly," is one of those phrases that only seem stranger the longer you look at them. It's possible to worry about warts, of course, although fortunately I don't think there's any evidence that worry itself causes warts. I suppose a "worry wart" could be a wart that one "worries" (in the sense of "fiddle with") in moments of stress, but that sounds like a bad idea.

"Worry" itself is an interesting word, one that has traveled far from its origins. When "worry" first appeared in Old English (as "wrygan"), it meant, not "to fret," but "to strangle" (putting a whole new light on "put your worries behind you"). That grisly meaning of "worry" softened a bit over the subsequent centuries, first to "bite and shake" (as dogs "worry" their rubber toys today), then "to harass or vex," until finally arriving at its modern meaning of "to make (or to be) persistently anxious" around 1822.

"Wart," on the other hand, has meant "a small excrescence on the skin" since it appeared in Old English from a Germanic root. Several centuries of development gave "wart" a variety of figurative meanings, including that of "a defect or unattractive feature" (as in the phrase "warts and all") and, perhaps inevitably, "an annoying, obnoxious or insignificant person" in the 19th century.

Thus the stage is set for decoding "worry wart" as "a person who annoys others by worrying loudly and constantly over nearly everything." The earliest use of the phrase in print found so far is from 1956, although an earlier form, "worryguts," had been popular in Britain since the 1930s. But "worry wart" became a household standard when it was used as the name of a recurrent character in "Out Our Way," a popular newspaper comic strip drawn by James R. Williams from 1922 to 1957. Oddly enough, Williams' "Worry Wart" was a young boy who caused worry in others, rather than being plagued by worry himself.[1]

Definition

Description

Some people can be especially neurotic or nervous by nature, living out their lives in a state of excessive worry. These obsessive concerns may either be global or amazingly minor in scope. Such a person is often said to be a worry wart, also rendered as worrywart or worry-wart in some literary references. A worry wart's fears are generally viewed by others as irrational or completely out of proportion to the actual situation.

A worry wart in an office environment, for example, may spend most of his or her time fretting over getting laid off or fired. While the actual chances of a worry wart actually becoming unemployed may be remote at best, a neurotic employee often seeks out advice from co-workers on how to handle his or her inevitable dismissal. Others may worry excessively about job performance or customer complaints or minor conflicts with their superiors.

A parent described as a worry wart may have irrational fears about their children's safety, causing him or her to take elaborate security steps in order to overprotect a child. News reports of a distant tragedy involving a child may cause a worry wart to install a security fence around the entire yard or to forbid a child from leaving the home at all without close supervision. What may constitute a minor childhood injury to some parents may represent a major medical emergency to a worry wart.[2]