“Nebby” Means “Nosy”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nell from Asheville, North Carolina.

Hi, Nell. How are you doing?

I’m doing great. What about you?

We’re doing great.

I had a question about my mom’s strange use of English.

Way back last year when she was visiting, my husband was, I think he was like organizing spices in our spice cabinet or something, and my mom was standing right behind him, directing him where to put certain spices.

And he just turned around and looked at her dead in the eye and didn’t say anything.

And she stopped what she was doing and kind of paused and said, oh, I’m just being nabby, aren’t I?

And what did he say? Most importantly, what did he say?

Unlike my mom, it tends to be pretty quiet. That’s his power.

So I don’t think he said anything.

He just went back to starting spices.

So that stuck with me because it’s just a word I’ve heard her use before, but that particular moment I was like, what?

I don’t even, I mean, obviously from context I know what it means, but I’ve never heard anyone else use that word.

So that’s what I was calling about.

Nebby.

I’m being nebby.

And what have you learned about nebby since?

Well, so I haven’t listened to this show. I mean, I looked it up. It looks like it’s like a word for nosy or kind of, I guess, yeah.

And then that context, the way my mom used it isn’t quite nosy, but, you know, kind of like maybe meddling in other people’s stuff.

Now, I’m going to guess that your mom isn’t from Asheville.

No, actually, so my mom.

Wait, wait, let’s let us guess.

Martha’s going to guess.

Martha.

I’m going to guess the Pennsylvania area.

Anywhere in that area?

So it’s, she is actually a little bit, she moved around a lot as a kid.

So the most longest period of in her life, she was actually in California, but her family is from the Northeast.

And I know she was born in New York and I believe she lived in Pennsylvania for like a period in her like elementary school years.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Yeah, I guess we’ll count that.

Yeah.

Give me a bronze star, Michael.

And I do, like, if you go back family roots, I know we have ancestors from the Pennsylvania area as well.

Do you have Scots-Irish in the family roots?

Yeah, I believe so.

Yeah, well, that makes sense because nebby in this country is particularly used in that area, in Pennsylvania and areas of, as Grant said, Scots-Irish settlement.

And the word neb itself for nose or beak goes all the way back to Old English.

It goes back a thousand years or so.

So somebody who’s nebby is literally nosy. They’re sticking their nose in your business.

So they’re standing over you and telling you where to put your spices?

Pretty much.

Pretty much.

So when I started looking into it, I did see that it was maybe a regional word.

And so I actually did go and call my mom and say, like, you know, how does this work?

And it was really interesting to, I didn’t know much about how much she moved as a kid until we had this discussion.

So, like, digging into this word, like, prompted a larger discussion about, like, where she lived.

And maybe if I dig in, I can figure out why she uses jolly so much as well.

Very nice.

That sounds like your next project.

Yeah, we’re glad to spark those kinds of conversations.

We should say, too, that it’s not related to nebbish.

We get asked that a lot.

But the word nebbish or nebbishy, meaning sort of, what would you say?

Nerdy, maybe.

Nerdy person.

It’s just a coincidence that those two words look alike.

Oh, that’s good to note.

It’s still used in the north of England and Scotland today.

A large swathe of Scotland still uses it.

And we have it in print in the U.S. as far back as the 1920s.

But for some reason, it really stuck in Pennsylvania.

And neb, by the way, originally only refers to the snout or the beak or the nose of an animal and then later referred to human noses.

Yeah, and faces sometimes.

Shakespeare used it to mean mouth.

And if you really want to emphasize that somebody’s got a real snoot on them, you call them a neb nose.

Well, I’m saving that one.

So there you go, Nell.

Take care, Nell.

Cool.

Well, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Our pleasure.

Call me in sometime, will you?

Thank you.

Bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, we’d like to help open those doorways for you.

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