nerve-wreck

plural nerve-wrecks

1. alternativeAlternative form of nerve rack.

   Plunging deep in trauma and nerve-wreck after surviving a Nazi' shelling in one of the felled London streets.

   2003, Achife Francis, The Priest: Nil, →ISBN, page 1

   2 more examples

   It stands not far under these circumstances from the lunatic asylum and leaves a memory of nerve-wreck, or even of cowardice, which does not minister to self-respect.

   1908, The Lancet, page 410

   The result as we saw it was a terrible one, and we could fancy the nerve-wreck of Charles Baudelaire, before the bow snapped, from the ravaged picture before us.

   1920, Martin Birnbaum, Oscar Wilde: Fragments and Memories, page 15

2. A person who is debilitated by stress.

   He was a nerve-wreck.

   1979, Anwar Sadat, Raphael Israeli, The public diary of President Sadat - Volume 3, →ISBN, page 1041

   2 more examples

   Behold the triumph of hypnotic mystification by the might of which the vacuous become profound and the flabby-willed nerve-wreck a heroine of dauntless faith!

   1911, The Literary Digest - Volume 42, page 684

   It wouldn't happen again, for not one in a hundred of your Squadron-Leaders is a nerve-wreck.

   1978, Harford Montgomery Hyde, Solitary in the ranks: Lawrence of Arabia as airman and private soldier