The Collaborative International Dictionary
nerve-racking \nerve-racking\ (n[~e]rv"-r[a^]k`[i^]ng), adj. Extremely irritating to the nerves; stressful; trying; as, nerve-wracking noise. [Also spelled nerve-wracking.]
Syn: stressful, trying.
nerve-wracking \nerve-wracking\ (n[~e]rv"-r[a^]k`[i^]ng), adj. Same as nerve-racking.
Syn: stressful, trying.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. Intensely distressing or irritate to the nerves. alt. Intensely distressing or irritate to the nerves.
WordNet
adj. extremely irritating to the nerves; "nerve-racking noise"; "the stressful days before a war"; "a trying day at the office" [syn: nerve-racking, stressful, trying]
Usage examples of "nerve-wracking".
Once the train enters Poland, and the names of the towns they pass draw an arrow toward Auschwitz, Aaron finds himself wishing for some such distraction, even a rowdy SS songfes to kill the nerve-wracking hours.
For a moment that was blessedly brief, Foster could hear again the drone and wail of the bagpipes, the demented shrieks of the charging Highlanders, the roar of the swivel-guns, boomings of muskets and pistols, death cries of men, the nerve-wracking screaming of a wounded horse somewhere nearby in the flameshot hell of fog and wreaths of lung searing powder smoke.
For a moment that was blessedly brief, Foster could hear again the drone and wail of the bagpipes, the demented shrieks of the charging Highlanders, the roar of the swivel guns, boomings of muskets and pistols, death cries of men, the nerve-wracking screaming of a wounded horse somewhere nearby in the flame-shot hell of fog and wreaths of lung-searing powder smoke.
The fresh ceramic with which teams resealed the vessels' stress-cracked hulls was black, and the sound of grinders processing the dense rock into raw material for the glazing kilns was nerve-wracking and omnipresent.
It hung beeping for a nerve-wracking twelve seconds, and then the hatchway hissed open and they tumbled through into a dark and narrow corridor smelling of greasy food and dirty rest rooms.
Gravity polarizers were a wonderful invention, and he was very glad humans had mastered them, but they were nerve-wracking.
That flight had been an epic nightmare, requiring multiple midair refuelings and continuous, nerve-wracking close-formation flying, a tactic designed to make several planes appear as one on enemy radar.
Many of the Voodoos cried, some held their hands over their ears to blot out the nerve-wracking shriek of the wind.