Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to worry someone, to nag.

1848		Thackeray in Oxford Thackeray 424: I don't permit ’em to whex, worrit, or distubb m.
1853		H. Hayman Pawnbroker’s Daughter 172: He don’t deserve to have no darter, or only one as ’ud worrit an plague him.
1860		J. Hollingshead Odd Journeys 292: The stout young woman very properly replied [...] that she could not be ‘worritted’ on such an occasion.
1871		‘George Eliot’ Middlemarch II 66: It will worret you to death, Lucy; that I can see.
1898		J.D. Brayshaw Slum Silhouettes 43: Everybody knows she worrited her fust husband to death.
1902		B. Baynton ‘Scrammy ’And’ in Murdoch & Drake-Brockman Classic Australian Short Stories (1997) 40: It had been ‘worritin’’ him all day.

2. to worry someone, to be worried.

1818		C. Lamb letter 18 Feb. in Johnson Best Letters 226: These pests worrit me at business and in all its intervals.
1836–7		Dickens Pickwick Papers (1999) 348: ‘Don’t worrit your poor mother,’ said Mrs. Sanders.
1848		Thackeray Vanity Fair III 154: Lord bless us, how she did use to worret us at Sunday-school.
1859		‘George Eliot’ Adam Bede (1873) 125: Your aunt’s been worrited to-day.
1869		J.R. Green letter Nov. in Stephen Letters of J.R. Green (1901) 235: I have been worriting myself these last days with those Welsh chaps and our early history.