At our house Christmas is a time to eat nuts. We used to get them whole and spend Christmas morning filling up our just emptied stockings with broken shells.
Nuts is one of those English words that has about a million meanings.
Nut
- is, of course, the hard fruit that you can eat.
- a small metal fastener, with a hole, used to tighten or hold bolts.
- to be angry – “He went nuts when I broke his phone”
- to be crazy or mad – “The old man talking to his dog is a bit nuts”
- to be a fan, to really like something “He’s nuts about trains”
- head (always singular). “She bounced the ball 12 times on her nut.”
- to hit with your head. “She nutted him because he touched her bum”
- men’s testicles (always plural). “He had to sit down for 10 minutes because he got hit in the nuts.”
- part of a stringed instrument, like a violin.
There’s lot of phrases with nuts – to do one’s nut means to go crazy or get angry. “My mum will do her nut when she finds out I failed again.”
Off one’s nut also means to be crazy. “They think I’m off my nut, because I want to write a blog about cheese.”
There are a few more expressions that use nut, can you think of some?
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