{"id":8600,"date":"2011-10-31T16:43:13","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T20:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/?p=8600"},"modified":"2016-12-07T19:26:36","modified_gmt":"2016-12-08T00:26:36","slug":"nervous-as-a-witch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/archives\/8600","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;nervous as a witch&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><strong>witch <\/strong>\u2013 A person, especially a woman, who is given to the black art; one regarded as possessing supernatural or magical power by compact with evil spirits; a sorcerer or sorceress; \u2013 now applied only to women, but formerly used of men as well.  \u2014 Webster, 1882<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/tbl_bullet.gif\"\/> <em>&#8220;Do you feel nervous as a witch on certain days of the month?&#8221; Advertisement for Lydia E. Pinkham&#8217;s Vegetable Compound, 1946<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"float: left; color: #6384bd; font-size: 44px; line-height: 35px; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 3px; font-family: Times, serif, Georgia;\">T<\/span>he saying &#8220;nervous as a witch&#8221; originated as a phrase in New England, and came to mean a very restless person. An early use may have been to compare the actions of a person to one under suspicion during the Salem witch hunts of the 1690s. Ma uses the expression to describe Laura&#8217;s inability to sit still and remain calm after having seen two large buffalo wolves when she and Carrie were sliding on the ice of Silver Lake in 1879. <\/p>\n<p>The expression &#8220;nervous as a witch&#8221; appeared in another famous book about four sisters, <em>Little Women<\/em>, by Louisa May Alcott. <\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/tbl_book.gif\" \/><br \/>\n<strong>witch<\/strong><br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&#8220;nervous as a witch&#8221; (SSL 17)<br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>restless<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8603,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[624],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8600"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8600"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8631,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8600\/revisions\/8631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}