If someone's crazy, you call them a 'nut'. How did this originate?
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Halskiisaklink
ANSWERS: 4
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Nuts: Probably influenced by a metaphoric application of nut to "head" (1846, e.g. to be off one's nut "be insane," 1860). Nut "crazy person, crank" is attested from 1903, (British form nutter first attested 1958). Connection with the slang "testicle" sense has tended to nudge it toward taboo. "On the N.B.C. network, it is forbidden to call any character a nut; you have to call him a screwball." ["New Yorker," Dec. 23, 1950] "Please eliminate the expression 'nuts to you' from Egbert's speech." [Request from the Hays Office regarding the script of "The Bank Dick," 1940] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nuts
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To add to Nevets: A person with ginger hair is often called a 'ginger nut' = 'ginger head' I bashed him on the nut. = I hit him on the head Get that into your nut. = Get that into your head (learn it). But what I found was this too; Crazy, idiotic, as in Mary's nutty as a fruitcake if she thinks she can get away with that. The adjective nutty meaning "insane" was first recorded in 1821; the similarity to fruitcake, which literally contains nuts as well as fruit, was first recorded in 1935. The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms
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The basic sense of its Indo-European root ("knuk") was "lump," and most uses of "nut" in English have been based on the sense of "a small, hard kernel." The use of "nuts" to mean "crazy" that you mention comes from the slang "nut" meaning "head," and is derived from the description of an addled person as being "off his nut." Taken from a great resource online: http://www.word-detective.com/071000.html
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I'm just guessing here the full term is nutcase....which is hollow....so is a crazy person's head......'nut' is used as a shortform
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