get on someone's nerves

Idioms & Phrases

get on someone's nerves

Irritate someone, as in His fidgeting gets on the teacher's nerves, or, as T.S. Eliot put it in The Elder Statesman (1959): "How it used to get on my nerves, when I saw you always sitting there with your nose in a book." [c. 1900]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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