Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1923, said to have been coined by U.S. cartoonist Billy De Beck (1890-1942), creator of "Barney Google."
Wiktionary
n. (context US idiomatic English) A general feeling of anxiety, fear, uneasiness, or nausea.
WordNet
n. extreme nervousness [syn: jitters, screaming meemies]
Wikipedia
Heebie-jeebies or heebie jeebies may refer to:
- Heebie-jeebies (idiom), used to describe a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, depression or illness.
- "Heebie Jeebies" (composition), a 1926 single by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five
- Heebie Jeebies (film), a 2005 film
- Heebie Jeebies (2013 film), a 2013 sci fi horror film
- " Heeby-Jeebies", a 1956 single by Little Richard
- The Hee Bee Gee Bees, a comedy parody of the Bee Gees
Usage examples of "heebie-jeebies".
This is a story about Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, and how they discovered something in the Library of Records of Heimlich Hospital that changed their lives forever and still gives me the heebie-jeebies whenever I am alone at night STOP.
She'd had much milder heebie-jeebies the day I'd broken my ankle being run over by a golf cart, but because of some deeply foreboding heebie-jeebies, we had not gone skiing in a valley that could have killed us in an avalanche had we been there.
And you've always told me, haven't you, that Oliver Quigley has the permanent heebie-jeebies all the time?
My grandmother, I realised, would have recognised this deep unease as heebie-jeebies, but I didn't know whether the feelings I was having derived from reason or instinct or simply queasiness.
When he was in one of his stranger moods, when he had the heebie-jeebies and sensed evil mojo at work in every shadow, when the circumstances were just right, he probably could be terrorized by a wilted sapling in a five-inch pot.