the.com/nag
Love expressed as a to-do list you never agreed to sign up for.
means To pester someone with repeated reminders or complaints until they finally do the thing you've been asking for.
from Likely from a Scandinavian source — compare Norwegian and Swedish dialect 'nagga,' meaning to gnaw, nibble, or chew away at something. English picked it up in the 1800s with exactly that flavor: not one bite, but a steady, wearing-down gnaw of complaint, repeated until it eats through resistance.
- origin
- from old norse gnaga, to gnaw
- irony
- nagging about nagging rarely works either
- research finding
- reminders work better framed as questions, not commands
- also means
- a small, stubborn horse