nebbishy

English

Etymology

From nebbish +‎ -y.

Adjective

nebbishy (comparative more nebbishy, superlative most nebbishy)

1. Resembling or characteristic of a nebbish
   • 1988 August 26, Lawrence Bommer, “The Book of Blanche”, in Chicago Reader‎^[1]:

     Jeff Johnson's nebbishy Blanche, for example, is a complete comic character, a demented Dorothy (a la Martin Short) who can write her way back to Kansas.

   • 2011, Peter L. Bergen, The Longest War:

     As we have seen, one of the intellectual architects of that war was Sayyid Qutb, a nebbishy Egyptian writer with a Hitler mustache who arrived in the placid town of Greeley, Colorado, in 1949 to attend college.

   • 2019, Fancy Feast, “On Being a Fetish”, in Jewish Currents, number Summer 2019:

     Where American Jewish men contend with stereotypes of being oversexed, needy, nebbishy and neurotic (like Woody Allen, boo hiss), Jewish women are cast as withholding, bossy, exotic, and materialistic (like Fran Drescher, which honestly? Goals).

Synonyms

• nebbishlike