nut

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   Any of various hard-shelled seeds or hard, dry fruits from various families of plants.

   There are many sorts of nuts: peanuts, cashews, pistachios, Brazil nuts and more.

2. 2
   noun

   A piece of hardware, typically metal and typically hexagonal or square in shape, with a hole through it having internal screw threads, intended to be screwed onto a threaded bolt or other threaded shaft.

   As the bolt tightens into the nut, it pulls the tenon on the side rail into the mortise in the bedpost and locks them together. There are also some European beds that reverse the bolt and nut by setting the nut into the bedpost with the bolt inserted into a slotted area in the side of the rail.

3. 3
   noun

   The head.

   Off one's nut—crazy; mad. S. Nut is a slang term for the head.

4. 4
   noun

   A crazy person.

   He was driving his car like a nut.

5. 5
   noun

   An extreme enthusiast.

   a fashion nut — a gun nut — a sailing nut

6. 6
   noun

   An extravagantly fashionable young man.

   ‘You are not going to be what they call a Nut, are you?’ she inquired with some anxiety, partly with the idea that a Nut would be an extravagance which her sister's small household would scarcely be justified in incurring ….

7. 7
   noun

   Senses related to male genitalia.

   [...] The Tentigo, head or Nut of the Clitoris, covered by the Nymphes, as by a foreskin and the impaſſable paſſage of it [...]

8. 8
   noun

   Monthly expense to keep a venture running.

   $8,000 a month? I had no idea my nut was that big.

Etymology

From Middle English note, nute, from Old English hnutu, from Proto-West Germanic *hnut, from Proto-Germanic *hnuts (“nut”), from a root *knu- possibly shared with Proto-Celtic *knūs and Latin nux (“nut”). Based on the form of the nouns and the restriction of the root to Germanic, Celtic and Italic, it has been argued to be of non-Indo-European (substrate) origin. See also West Frisian nút, Dutch noot, German Nuss, Danish nød, Swedish nöt, Norwegian nøtt.