Nuts

How to spell nuts

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce nuts

What does nuts mean?

1. nounHard-shelled edible kernels such as almonds, walnuts, or cashews.
2. nounSmall squared metal pieces with threaded holes that screw onto bolts to fasten things.
3. adjectiveInformally, mad, foolish, or extremely enthusiastic about something.

Nuts in a sentence

• noun

  The recipe calls for a handful of chopped nuts on top of the salad.

• noun

  He tightened the nuts on the bicycle wheel with a small spanner.

• adjective

  The whole plan sounded completely nuts until it actually worked.

• noun

  Passengers with allergies were warned that the snack contained nuts.

• noun

  The flat-pack shelf came with a bag of bolts and nuts.

• adjective

  He is absolutely nuts about classic cars and talks of nothing else.

Where does nuts come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English hnutu, the native Germanic term for a hard-shelled seed or fruit, and it has close relatives across the Germanic languages, including the Dutch noot and the German Nuss. The literal sense, a kernel sealed inside a tough shell, has stayed remarkably stable for well over a thousand years. From the hard shell came the familiar engineering sense, the small squared metal block with a threaded hole that grips a bolt, recorded from the seventeenth century. The slang meaning 'crazy' grew in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, probably from the head being jokingly called a 'nut' and from the idea of being soft or cracked in that nut. As an exclamation of dismissal or frustration it became widely known in American usage and was famously snapped back by an American general besieged in 1944. The spelling has barely changed apart from the early loss of the silent initial h.

How the word is built

• nut (Old English hnutu: hard-shelled fruit)
• -s (plural/inflection)