nut

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A small, hard fruit or seed with a tough shell, such as a peanut or walnut.

   She added some chopped nuts to the salad.

2. 2
   noun

   A small metal piece with a hole in the middle that screws onto a bolt to hold things together.

   He tightened the nut with a wrench.

3. 3
   noun

   A person who is extremely enthusiastic about something.

   My brother is a complete football nut.

4. 4
   noun

   A crazy or foolish person.

   He drives like a nut on the motorway.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Nut comes from Old English and is related to Latin nux, also meaning “nut,” and to nucleus. The early-20th-century senses “eccentric person” and “enthusiast” probably developed from an informal use of nut for the head; that use also produced nutty “crazy” and the verb nut “butt with the head.”

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.

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary