Q: A recent BuzzFeed headline suggested that Travis Kelce proposed to Taylor Swift sooner than he intended because she was “antsy.” Now I’m antsy about learning the history of “antsy.”
A: In the Aug. 27, 2025, article on BuzzFeed, Ed Kelce, the father of the football player, is quoted as saying his son “was going to put it off” for a couple of weeks, but the singer “was getting maybe a little antsy” to be engaged.
As for the history of “antsy,” a possible early version (spelled “ancey”) appeared in the first half of the 19th century, but it’s uncertain that the two terms are related, even though both apparently have the same meaning—restlessly impatient or agitated.
The Dictionary of American Regional English begins its “antsy” entry with this early example: “Minard’s talking and Peake’s scribbling were enough to drive anyone ancey” (Papers of Bishop Jackson Kemper, 1838).
However, the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference, says it’s “unclear” whether “ancey” and “antsy,” though used “apparently with the same sense,” should be “interpreted as showing the same word.”
The OED suggests that the story of “antsy” actually began nearly a century later with the appearance of the expression “to have ants in one’s pants and variants.”
The dictionary defines the expression as “to fidget constantly; to be restlessly impatient or eager,” noting that in early use the fidgeting involved sexual feelings, as in the first Oxford citation:
“Some of the boys around town sure got ants in their pants over her” (from Torch Song: A Play in Prologue and Three Acts, by Kenyon Nicholson).
Here’s a later OED example where someone is turned on by music: “This guy gets so worked up when he hears swing that he can’t sit still but jumps around as if he had ants in his pants” (Pic magazine, March 9, 1938).
As for “antsy” (spelled the usual way), it apparently appeared for the first time in the phrase “antsy-pantsy,” which was derived from the longer expression. The earliest example we’ve found is from The Long Death, a 1937 murder mystery by George Dyer:
“I dope it out that the gunman in the front got through writing, and began to get antsy-pantsy to go on with the kidnapping where he’d left off.” (He had been writing a “snatch note” demanding “20 grand.”)
The oldest example we’ve seen for “antsy” used by itself is in Green’s Dictionary of Slang: “The psychologist could look at his Van Gogh and get antsy all by himself” (from One Cried Murder, a 1945 mystery novel by Jean Leslie).
And this is the latest citation in the OED: “The hours of telly exposure made me oddly antsy and anxious” (from Time Out New York, Jan. 1, 2009).
Finally, the combinations of “ants” and “pants” reminds us of an antsy mnemonic used to remember the difference between stalactites and stalagmites: “When the mites go up the tites go down.”
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