worrit

worrit

English

Etymology

Dialectal alteration of worry, 19th c.

Noun

worrit (countable and uncountable, plural worrits)

1. (dialectal, nonstandard) Worry; anxiety.
   • 1861, Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Works of Charles Dickens Household Edition: Great Expectations, Volume 1, James G. Gregory, page 14,

     "Where have you been, you young monkry?" said Mrs. Joe, stamping her foot. "Tell me directly what you’ve been doing to wear me away with feet and fright and worrit, or I’d have you out of that corner if you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys."

   • 1891, Margaret Oliphant, The Heir Presumptive and the Heir Apparent, 2009, page 113,

     Them hunting and fishing things, if it was nothing else, puts Mr. Saunders and John in a continual worrit, special when there's gentlemen coming that don't bring a vally — and half the gentlemen here don't.

2. (dialectal, nonstandard) One who worries excessively or unnecessarily.

Verb

worrit (third-person singular simple present worrits, present participle worriting, simple past and past participle worrited or worrit)

1. (dialectal, nonstandard, intransitive) To worry; to be anxious.
   • 1954, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring:

     I'd best be turning for home. Mrs. Maggot will be worriting with the night getting thick.

2. (dialectal, nonstandard, transitive) To worry (someone); to cause to be anxious.
   • 1836, Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, Easyread Comfort Edition, 2008, page 189,

     'Yes; don't worrit your poor mother,' said Mrs. Sanders.

     'She's quite enough to worrit her, as it is, without you, Tommy,' said Mrs. Cluppins, with sympathising resignation.

   • 1940, Hammond Innes, The Trojan Horse, 2012, unnumbered page,

     'Och, it's you, is it, Mr Kilmartin? Wherever have ye been? The young lady was fair worrit to death when ye didna come home.'

   • 2010, Amanda Forester, The Highlander's Sword, page 169,

     I dinna wish to worrit myself about ye running off to the nunnery or wi' another man.

Adjective

worrit (comparative more worrit, superlative most worrit)

1. (dialectal, nonstandard) Worried.
   • 1906, Robert Love Taylor, John Trotwood Moore, Thornwell Jacobs (editors), The Taylor-Trotwood Magazine, Volumes 3-4, page 641,

     An' every day Chinook Bill got more an' more worrit an' turrible reticent.

   • 1926, Marshall Newton Goold, Heather Heretics, page 204,

     'She's gey sickly, but more worrit that she should be sick at all than by whatever it is itself.'

   • 2010, Mercedes Lackey, Intrigues, 2012, unnumbered page,

     “I don' think Dallen'd let me break m'neck,” Mags pointed out. “I'd be more worrit about them as is on foot or reg'lar horses.”

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for worrit in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)