Meaning
A metaphor for the fluttery, queasy, hollow sensation felt in the stomach during nervousness, anxiety or intense excitement, as before an exam, a performance or a first date. The feeling has a real physical basis: stress hormones triggered by the fight-or-flight response redirect blood away from the digestive tract and disrupt the stomach's contractions, producing a sensation likened to insects fluttering inside. Usually constructed with have or get. Not always negative: it covers excitement and anticipation as well as dread. Often shortened to plain butterflies, which Merriam-Webster enters as a sense of the noun butterfly. Regional use: American English origin; now standard in US, British and Commonwealth English.
Origin
The earliest known use is singular: Florence Converse's novel The House of Prayer (1908), cited by the OED, in which a train 'gave him a sad feeling, as if he had a butterfly in his stomach' - verified on Word Histories, which also corrects the garbled 'Florence Hull Fall' name that circulates online. The plural nervousness idiom is a later American newspaper development: the 17 August 1935 Philadelphia Inquirer prints Robert Benchley's drunk character saying 'I've got butterflies in my stomach', and the earliest clear nervousness use traced is a golfer's 'sudden attack of butterflys-in-the-stomach' in the Moline Daily Dispatch of 31 August 1937. US papers spread it rapidly through 1937-1942, and by October 1942 it was already being clipped to plain 'butterflies', the form Merriam-Webster now enters.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a butterfly in one's stomach
- get butterflies
- have butterflies in one's stomach
Usage Examples
- She had butterflies in her stomach all morning before her job interview.
- Even seasoned performers get butterflies in the moment before the curtain rises.
- The first day of school gave him butterflies, though he would never admit it.