Kelsey's nuts

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:14 PM -0600 1/3/01, Austin J. Gibbons wrote:
>Looking for the origin of the phrase "Kelesy's nuts".  It is the
>title of a blues song.  I don't know where I first heard it.  Have
>mostly heard it used as ". . .dead as Kelsey's nuts" --  ". . . cold
>as Kelsey's nuts" -- ". . . flat as Kelsey's nuts" etc.
>Thank you

There's a substantial entry in the Random House Historical Dictionary
of American Slang, with cites back to 1933 and this comment on the
origin:

perh. orig. alluding (with pun on slang NUT 'testicle') to the
permanency of welded nuts and bolts on wheels manufactured by the
Kelsey Wheel Co., prominent in the U. S. automotive industry in the
1920's; see P. Tamony, "Like Kelsey's Nuts...", Forum Anglicum XIV
(1985), pp. 120-33.


larry
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