nut

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: nŭt, IPA^(key): /nʌt/

• Audio (GA)

  (file)

• (California, New Zealand, Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): [nɐt]
• (Northern England) IPA^(key): /nʊt/
• Rhymes: -ʌt

A bowl of mixed nuts (hard-shelled seeds).

Assorted nuts (fasteners with internal threads).

The nut of a violin.

From Middle English nute, note, from Old English hnutu, from Proto-West Germanic *hnut, from Proto-Germanic *hnuts (“nut”) (compare West Frisian nút, Dutch noot, German Nuss, Danish nød, Swedish nöt, Norwegian nøtt), from a root *knu- also seen in Proto-Celtic *knūs (source of Irish cnó) 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 origin.[1][2] (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “Sex senses?”)

nut (plural nuts)

1. (food, broadly) 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.

   1. (botany, strictly) Such a fruit that is indehiscent.
2. (hardware) 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.

   Hypernyms: fastener, hardware

   Hyponyms: acorn nut, barrel nut, square nut, wing nut, wingnut, T-nut

   • 1998, Brian Hingley, Furniture Repair & Refinishing, page 95:

     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. (slang) The head. [from 19th c.]

   Synonyms: coconut, bonce, noodle

   • 1891, James Main Dixon, Dictionary of Idiomatic English Phrases‎, page 226:

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

   • 1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter V:

     Let the Cream get firmly in her nut the idea that Sir Roderick Glossop was not the butler, the whole butler and nothing but the butler, and disaster, as I saw it, loomed.

4. (slang) A crazy person.

   Synonyms: loony, nutbag, nutcase, nutter; see also Thesaurus:mad person

   He was driving his car like a nut.

   • 1975, Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (motion picture), spoken by McMurphy (Jack Nicholson):

     Which one of you nuts has got any guts?

5. (colloquial) An extreme enthusiast.

   a fashion nut — a gun nut — a sailing nut

6. (UK, slang, dated) An extravagantly fashionable young man. [1910s–1920s]
   • 1914, "Saki", ‘The Dreamer’, Beasts and Superbeasts, Penguin 2000 (Complete Short Stories), p. 323:

     ‘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. (anatomy) Senses related to male genitalia.
   1. (archaic) The glans (structure at the extremity of the penis or of the clitoris).
      • 1665, Dr. Chamberlain's Midwifes Practice‎, page 54:

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

      • 1763, A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences:

        GLANS, in anatomy, the anterior extremity of the penis, called by other different names, as the head of the penis, the nut of the penis, and the balanus of the penis.

      • 1864, Edward Cox, Cox's Companion to the Sea Medicine Chest:

        In persons troubled with tight foreskins, the matter from the urethra becomes collected between the foreskin and the nut of the penis.

      • 1965, Peter Fryer, The Birth Controllers, page 23:

        In this work the great Italian anatomist described a linen sheath which he claimed to have invented. Made to fit the glans, or nut of the penis, it was worn for protection against venereal disease.

      • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:nut.
   2. (vulgar, slang, chiefly plural) A testicle.

      Synonyms: ball, (taboo slang) bollock, nads

      I kicked him in the nuts.

   3. (vulgar, slang, uncountable) Semen, ejaculate.
      • 2005 July, “Breakdown”, in Spin, page 104:

        As loudmouthed lovermen, these Lil Jon-endorsed ATLiens denigrate women from the window to the wall, generously offering to "make nut come out your nose."

   4. (vulgar, slang, countable) Orgasm, ejaculation; especially release of semen.

      He just needs a good nut to make him feel better.

      • 2020, Dontavious Robinson, Gangster Mission Part One, Page Publishing, Inc, →ISBN:

        […] feelin' her pussy grippin' his dick as her nut lubricated him […]

      • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:nut.
8. (US, slang) Monthly expense to keep a venture running.
9. (US, slang) The amount of money necessary to set up some venture; set-up costs.
   • 1971, Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Harper Perennial, published 2005, page 11:

     My attorney was waiting in a bar around the corner. “This won't make the nut,” he said, “unless we have unlimited credit.”

10. (US, slang) A stash of money owned by an extremely rich investor, sufficient to sustain a high level of consumption if all other money is lost.
11. (music, lutherie) On stringed instruments such as guitars and violins, the small piece at the peghead end of the fingerboard that holds the strings at the proper spacing and, in most cases, the proper height.
12. (typography slang) En, a unit of measurement equal to half of the height of the type in use.
13. (climbing) A shaped piece of metal, threaded by a wire loop, which is jammed in a crack in the rockface and used to protect a climb. (Originally, machine nuts [sense #2] were used for this purpose.)
    • 2005, Tony Lourens, Guide to climbing, page 88:

      When placing nuts, always look for constrictions within the crack, behind which the nut can be wedged.

14. (poker, attributive) The best possible hand of a certain type. Compare nuts (“the best possible hand available”).

    nut straight, nut flush, nut full house

15. (firearms) The tumbler of a gunlock.[3]
16. (nautical) A projection on each side of the shank of an anchor, to secure the stock in place.
17. (archaic) A small rounded cake or cookie.

    dough-nut

• → Japanese: ナット (natto)

nut (third-person singular simple present nuts, present participle nutting, simple past and past participle nutted or (nonstandard) nut)

1. (mostly in the form "nutting") To gather nuts.
   • 1575, John Stephen Farmer, editor, Five anonymous plays, Early English Dramatists‎, volume Fourth Series, London: William How for Richard Ihones, page 171:

     I will no more a-nutting go ; That journey caused all this woe.

   • 1847, Howitt's Journal of Literature and Popular Progress:

     […] the huge country fellow […] leapt forth from the underwood, exclaiming "That is not allowed, gentlemen! That is not allowed! Nobody is allowed to nut here; I must take your names to Sir John!"

   • 1978, Edwin Way Teale, A walk through the year‎, Dodd, Mead, →ISBN, page 238:

     We are going a-nutting.

2. (UK, transitive, slang) To hit deliberately with the head; to headbutt.

   Synonyms: butt, Glasgow kiss, Liverpool kiss, loaf

   • 1999, Nik Cohn, Yes we have no: adventures in the other England:

     One night, we were fumbling each other out by the toilets when a Rocker in full leathers came out of the Gents and, without breaking stride or saying a word, nutted me square between the eyes. I went down as though shot...

3. (slang, mildly vulgar) To orgasm; to ejaculate.

   Synonyms: blow a nut, bust a nut; see also Thesaurus:ejaculate

   • 1996, “Bust a Nut”, performed by Uncle Luke featuring The Notorious B.I.G.:

     I got a bitch that suck my dick 'til I nut

   • 2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 152:

     Isis rode my mug like she was on a ten-inch dick, and as soon as she nutted I tossed her ass off a me and flipped her on her back, then fucked the shit outta her cause it was payback time.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:nut.
4. (slang) To hit in the testicles.
5. (slang) To defeat thoroughly.

nut (plural nuts)

1. Alternative form of nuth (“Indian nose ring”)

Variant of not.

nut

1. (Scotland, colloquial) No.
   • 1995, Alan Warner, Morvern Callar, Vintage, published 2015, page 26:

     Did you like them boys? I goes.
     Nut. She shook her hair.
     Neither?
     Nut. Right townies.

• NTU, Tun, tun

• IPA^(key): [nʊ̠t]

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nut (uncountable)

1. use, benefit

• 2007. The UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Department of Linguistics.

From the adjective Middle Dutch nutte (“useful”), or from Middle Dutch nut (“yield”), from Old Dutch *nut, from Proto-Germanic *nutją, *nutjō (“profit, yield, utility”), from Proto-Indo-European *newd- (“to seize; grasp; use”).

• IPA^(key): /nʏt/

• Audio

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• Hyphenation: nut
• Rhymes: -ʏt
• Homophone: Nuth

nut n (uncountable)

1. use, point, utility, sense

   Synonym: zin

2. benefit

   Synonym: voordeel

nut (comparative nutter, superlative nutst)

1. (obsolete) useful

   Synonym: nuttig

• onnut

nut

1. Alternative form of not

From Old Norse hnútr.

nut m (definite singular nuten, indefinite plural nuter, definite plural nutene)

1. a tall, rounded mountain top

• “nut” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

From Old Norse hnútr.

nut m (definite singular nuten, indefinite plural nutar, definite plural nutane)

1. a tall, rounded mountain top

• “nut” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

• not

From Old Norse hnot, from Proto-Germanic *hnuts.

nut f

1. nut

• Swedish: nöt

• IPA^(key): /nut/

• Audio

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• Rhymes: -ut
• Syllabification: nut

nut f

1. genitive plural of nuta

• IPA^(key): /nʌʔ/

nut

1. (South Scots) no; used to show disagreement or negation.

nut

1. Alternative form of naut

• Elizabeth Pearce, A Grammar of Unua (2015)