Nutty
/ˈnʌti/noun
Silly, eccentric, or mentally unbalanced; also containing or tasting like nuts.
Did you know?‘Nutty’ comes from ‘nut,’ and in English the nut was long a symbol of the brain or head, which is why the word drifted toward meanings like ‘crazy’ or ‘eccentric.’
Etymological Timeline
Old English
OE
hnutu
“A nut; the hard-shelled fruit or seed of certain trees.”
Proto-Germanic
PGmc
*hnuts
“Nut.”
Proto-Indo-European
PIE
*kneu-
“To knot, swell; source of words for hard-shelled nuts in Germanic.”
16th Century
English
nutty
“Containing or resembling nuts; full of nuts.”
19th Century
English
nutty
“Odd, foolish, or mentally deranged.”
Modern English
English
nutty
“Silly, eccentric, or mentally unbalanced; also flavored with nuts.”