Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also collywabbleums, kolly wobbles) feelings of tension, fear or sickness, usu. seen as stemming from the stomach.

1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1830		W.H. Williams Wreck I iii: Come along, Mr. Gogmagog [...] you’ll have the collywabbleums in your throttle.
1834		‘Jack Downing’ Andrew Jackson 91: There he found the people all in the dumps; there was a general depression of sperits; the people seem’d tu have taken the collywabbles.
1857		Gloucester Jrnl 7 Nov. n.p.: But he, who can bully a witness into innocent perjury, no more dare tell Mrs Blobbs his suspicions than he dare ask the Lord Chief Justice how his collywobbles are this term.
1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn).
1861		A. Smith Medical Student 7: It is absolutely necessary to preserve his health, and keep him from getting the collywobbles in his pandenoodles.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1881		Sheffield Daily Teleg. 30 Apr. 9/7: I’ve a soothing powder here as was made up for the Queen Wictoriar, all along of the conwulsions and collywobbles vot she’s subject to.
1886		Era (London) 6 Mar. 9/2: Madame Collardin has the collywobbles.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 19: Colly Wobbles, the stomach-ache.
1897		W.S. Maugham Liza of Lambeth (1966) 22: My royal ’ighness ’as got the collywobbles.
1907		Manchester Courier 2 Aug. 16/5: The doctors may rave about bacilli and bacteria and predict [...] the collywobbles if you eat this [...] or eat that.
1916		Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 20: We must pack off to Brother Michael because we have the collywobbles!
1925		Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer 82: Dont eat the icecream too fast or you’ll have collywobbles.
1932		S. Beckett Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1993) 75: ‘What’s wrong with him anyhow?’ she demanded [...] ‘Collywobbles’ he said slyly.
1939		Wodehouse Uncle Fred in the Springtime 270: ‘A touch of the collywobbles, I understand’.
1943		Sun. Post (Lanarks.) 9 May 7/5: Grandpa called it collywobbles [...] Today the word is ‘gastritis’.
1959		I. & P. Opie Lore and Lang. of Schoolchildren (1977) 205: He is a ‘funk’, or a ‘funk-pot’, or has ‘got the collywobbles’.
1963–74		B. Humphries Barry McKenzie [comic strip] in Complete Barry McKenzie (1988) 23: Cripes, Blanchie, I’m starting to get the kolly wobbles.
1977		S. Berkoff East in Decadence and Other Plays (1985) 49: Knife hits flesh . . . You know the feel? It’s soft and hard at once and gives you collywobbles and thrilldoms of pure joy.
1982		P. Theroux London Embassy 106: Some of this stuff gives me the collywobbles, don’t it?
1996		K. Lette Mad Cows 5: All those months of cerebral hibernation and hormonal collywobbles.
2007		S. Maloney Sucked In 270: Phil Sebastian’s had a fit of the collywobbles [...] If Phil pulls out we’ll both have the credibility chocks kicked out from under us.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 206: I dare say our young Dilwyn felt the old collywobbles coming on.

2. the stomach.

1853		‘Cuthbert Bede’ Adventures of Mr Verdant Green (1982) I 84: Peakyish you feel, don’t you now, with a touch of the mulligrubs in your collywobbles.
1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1876		C. Hindley Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack 241: Old Sir John Collywobbles, of Collywobbles Hall, in Collywobbles Dale, just by the river of Collywobble, in Bellycheershire.
1886		Northern Echo 23 Dec. 4/3: These so-called guardians of the poor [...] talk of ‘warming up poor old folks ‘collywobbles’ with rum.
1891		Morpeth Herald 10 Jan. 7/3: Mr W.A. Robertson [...] sent an apology stating tht he had caught a chill [...] in his collywobbales.

3. (also colliwobbles) diarrhoea.

1986

R. Beckett Dinkum Aussie Dict. 16: Colliwobbles: One can have a ‘case of the colliwobbles’ if one is ‘crook in the guts’, i.e., sick.