The phrase to be nebby is heard particularly in Western Pennsylvania, and means to be “picky” or “gossipy.” Originally, it meant “nosy” or “snooping.” Nebby is a vestige of Scots-Irish, where the word neb means “nose” or “beak.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Nebby”
Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Emily from Fishers, Indiana.
Well, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
What’s going on, Emily?
Well, it’s kind of funny. I had a situation where I was talking to my husband and I said something about, well, I don’t want to be nebby about that. And he said, nebby, what are you talking about? What is nebby? And I realized that I’ve had these two girlfriends for 25 years who’ve used the word nebby, and now I’m starting to use it. And I don’t really know what it means, but I just kind of use it as if I do. So I thought, well, I will. I said, I need to contact Boy With Words and ask them what that means.
Yes, you do.
And so how do you use it? What’s your definition for it?
You know, I think it sounds like picky, like when you’re nitpicking about something. That’s how I use it. But I think my girlfriends use it to mean gossipy. So they’ll often say something like, before they say something that might be a little gossipy, they’ll say, oh, I hate to be nebby about that. But somehow I’ve adopted it to mean like picky, like I’m really picky about something. So I’m being very nebby, I know, like pretentious and picky about food or something like that.
Okay.
Okay.
And where are your girlfriends from? Did they grow up in Fishers?
They did not. They grew up in Michigan. But I did ask them something, and they said they had a friend. Because I asked them, where did you hear it? And they said they heard it from a girlfriend who lived in Pittsburgh.
Boom.
Martha, if I had a bell, I would ring it.
Why are you laughing?
There you go. Because both Grant and I were sitting here just hoping that you were going to say Pennsylvania. That’s so funny. They remember the first time they heard it. They were quite young. They were in grad school. And they heard it. And they thought it was such a fun word. And so they just started using it. And obviously now I’m using it and I don’t even know what I’m talking about.
Oh, okay. So they picked it up from their friend who is from Western Pennsylvania.
Perfect.
Yeah. Grant and I are really thrilled because this is a term that is pretty much particular to that area. Nebby meaning nosy or interfering, that kind of thing. Snoopy. Snooping. Yeah, that’s a good word for it or inquisitive.
But nosy is a particularly good definition.
It is a particularly good definition because neby comes from Scotland and Ireland and parts of northern England where neb means nose.
Or nib, N-I-B.
Yeah, yeah, like the nib of a pen.
It’s like the pointy part, the nose.
Yeah, you know, it’s funny because I kept thinking, is it nebulous?
But that would make no sense in terms of how I’m using it or they’re using it.
Right, right.
And I thought about the nib of a pencil or, you know, a pen, but then I didn’t know how that fit.
But nose makes a lot of sense.
The Scots and the Irish have long used it to mean the beak of a bird, too.
Yeah.
Oh, how do they spell it?
N-E-B.
Or N-I-B, either one.
Either one.
So if you’re nebby or nebby-nosed or nibby, then you’re sticking your nose into other people’s business.
And over time, that word came to mean more like being brusque or sort of, you know, cheeky.
Yeah.
So then from accidents of immigration and settlement.
Migration patterns.
It’s stuck in Pennsylvania, but pretty much nowhere else.
That’s so funny.
Well, no wonder nobody else knows what it means.
I’ve asked people before, and they’re like, I have no idea.
I’ve never heard that.
Yeah.
And they might tell you nebb out, which means to mind your own business.
Nebb out.
But out.
Oh, how funny.
That’s really fascinating.
Yeah.
Emily, I’m so happy that you had done your own field work and had sussed out that particularly important bit of information that it ultimately came from somebody from Pennsylvania.
That’s perfect.
Emily, thank you so much.
This is wonderful.
You’re welcome.
Thank you.
I will now know what I’m talking about.
Yeah, take that back to your friends in Michigan.
Bye-bye.
I will.
Bye-bye.
1737 is one of the early uses of the word nib to mean nose, right?
So she is using a word that has, you know, a little under 300 years of history.
Yeah, yeah.
More or less.
And very, very picturesque, right?
Very picturesque, yeah.
I love these words that take us back to who we were when we first got to this country, you know, these different roots.
And it’s not just the food words from the Native Americans, but it’s these strange little household words and the interpersonal words that come from the deeper parts of the dialect history.
Fossilized into the language.
Fossilized, yeah.
