heeby-jeebies

the heebie-jeebies

An extreme or acute sensation of fear, apprehension, worry, or anxiety. Often used with "get" or "give." I always get the heebie-jeebies when I walk through a graveyard. All these ghost stories are giving me the heebie-jeebies.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

heeby-jeebies

verb
See heebie-jeebies
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • heebie-jeebies
  • heeby
  • the heebie-jeebies
  • give (one) the heebie-jeebies
  • the shock of (one's) life
  • the shock of life
  • the fright of (one's) life
  • the fright of your life
  • give (someone) the fright of (someone's) life
  • get the fright of (one's) life
References in periodicals archive
I've been waking in the wee hours and suffering the heeby-jeebies.
women's own
It is supposed to emanate from the way the sitting room's gas lamps lose their glow when a lamp is lit in a room upstairs -but although this is admirably achieved it is the players themselves who guarantee the heeby-jeebies.
The silence is deadly; Gaslight SUTTON ARTS THEATRE, SUTTON COLDFIELD
Then we had the performance by one of the former Fleet Street papers that regularly puts the heeby-jeebies up its elderly matron readership by telling them asylum seekers are going to eat their pet poodles and sell them into sex-slavery.
We've become weather wimps and I blame Sien
Gothika (15) Psychiatrist Halle Berry gets big-time heeby-jeebies when she's locked up with demons.
Mailmovies : Viggo's racing to another hit; Millar's movie John Millar previews Viggo Mortensen's new movie Hidalgo, released April 16
Needless to say, she puts the heeby-jeebies up the townsfolk, and is regarded as a witch, a nasty, interfering piece of work.
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They don't really scare me - in fact, the only thing that gives me the heeby-jeebies are big, noisy lorries, but I don't suppose we'll come across too many of them.
I'm gonna Av a Grand time!; By AVRO ANSON Straight from the Mirror horse's mouth