the.com/jitters
the body rehearsing for a danger your calendar invented.
means A feeling of nervousness or anxious unease, often shown as trembling or fidgeting before something stressful.
from An American coinage from the early 20th century, built on "jitter," meaning to move in a quick, jerky, unsteady way. The word is imitative — its very sound mimics the rapid little twitches it names, a cousin of fidgety words like "jiggle" and "jerk." By the 1920s and '30s the "jitters" had become the nerves themselves, and the dance-floor energy of the age gave us the "jitterbug," all the same nervous bouncing turned into a beat.
- adrenaline source
- Same hormone fuels stage fright and bear escapes.
- caffeine link
- Blocks adenosine, leaving nerves with no off switch.
- micro-tremors
- Hands shake at roughly ten wobbles per second.
- survival origin
- Evolved to make prey flinch before predators pounced.
- contagious
- Watching anxious people raises your own heart rate.
coffee jitters — caffeine causes tremors and anxiety in 400+ mg doses, documented in millions of daily coffee drinkers
stage jitters — pre-performance anxiety that affects actors, musicians, and athletes before events like the academy awards or world cup finals