The Strongest Evidence for “Nervous Nellie” Leads to Politics, Not “Whoa, Nellie”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi. Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

This is Michelle, and I am calling from Thorn Bay, Alaska, on Prince of Wales Island, in the Inside Passage.

Oh, Thorn Bay. That sounds like a mystery novel.

What can we do for you, Michelle?

Well, I have a question about the term Nervous Nelly.

I refer to myself a lot as a nervous Nelly whenever I’m a driver or a passenger on a snowy and icy road.

And it just occurred to me that I had no idea what that meant.

And then I thought I’d call you guys.

You know, who are you going to call?

Grant and Martha.

It did.

It did.

Yeah.

So who was Nelly and why was she so nervous is what you’re wondering, I guess.

Right. And in my mind, I picture it as kind of like an olive oil character. Like, oh, my, oh, no, you know, knees knocking.

Yeah.

Bye-bye.

Right. Exactly.

Well, I love the image of olive oil, but Martha, what about a diplomat who won a Nobel Prize?

How about that?

Yes, what’s really interesting about this term, nervous Nellie, meaning somebody who’s, you know, kind of skittish and uncertain, we first see it popping up in the early 1920s, and it was popularized by its use in politics, especially involving a guy named Frank B. Kellogg.

He was a politician who served in the U.S. Senate, and Calvin Coolidge appointed him as Secretary of State.

And he was actually a high achiever in that he was part of a group that wrote the Kellogg-Briand Act, in which signing nations renounced war as an instrument of national policy.

And he actually won the Nobel Peace Prize for this.

But he was also known for being kind of nervous and hot-tempered and outspoken, kind of emotional.

And he was known for hemming and hawing over whether the U.S. should join the League of Nations.

And so he got kind of this reputation.

And some people have speculated that maybe some of his personality had to do with the fact that he was completely self-educated.

He never went to college. He never went to law school.

But he just worked his way up to become this well-known politician.

And so people started calling him Nervous Nelly.

And then it became extended to anybody who was overly timid or cautious.

Isn’t that interesting?

That is, I did not expect that one bit.

So the Nellie part, the Nellie part is just like alliteration or something?

Yeah, yeah.

That alliteration works really well.

And, you know, some people have speculated that maybe a nervous Nellie is like a horse, you know, like a whoa Nellie, like a horse.

But we don’t have any real evidence for that.

But what is so interesting to me is that it initially got popularized by its association with this well-known politician.

There’s a newspaper article that talks about a joke that was associated with Kellogg.

And they describe one of the ways in which he prevaricated.

It says his speeches were uniformly 45 minutes long, 20 to state the pros, 20 to state the cons, and five to explain why he felt obliged to take a judicious position between the two.

Wow.

Came from politics.

In what years was this again?

So he lived until 1937.

The Kellogg-Brand pact was 1927, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929.

Okay.

Well, you just blew my mind.

Because that was totally, totally not what I pictured.

But that makes a lot of sense.

That’s right.

Our work here is done.

Right.

And that gives me, now I can research it myself now that I know what I’m looking into.

Yeah, check out Frank B. Kellogg.

Yeah, I will check out Frank B. Kellogg.

And now I have a better understanding.

Okay, well, thank you, Martha and Grant, and I appreciate your time and your information and getting us through a really hard time in the past few years.

You guys carried us.

Aw, that’s very sweet.

You take care of yourself.

Thank you, Michelle.

Bye-bye.

It’s mutual.

Yeah, all right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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