[Ads-l] "Making the nut" explained

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

The OED has two exact matches for "making the nut". On match concerns
"violoncello" players, and does not seem relevant. The other match
appears in the 1933 cite below.

nut, n.1 and adj.2

[Begin excerpt]
8. U.S. slang.
 a. The amount of money required for a venture; set-up or overhead
costs. Originally in on the nut: out of pocket.

1909   W. Irwin Confessions Con Man 81   First, they took out the
'nut'. That is the general term, among gamblers for the expense
account.

1912   A. H. Lewis Apaches of N.Y. 201   Every day I'm open puts me
fifty dollars on th' nut.

1914   L. E. Jackson & C. R. Hellyer Vocab. Criminal Slang 62
Nut,..used by grafters whose operations involve an investment to
signify an expense incurred in connection with a venture.

1933   Sun (Baltimore) 28 Jan. 16/4   The difficulty of 'making the
nut', the term applied to accumulating the rental charge due each
night to the owner of the cab.

1936   Amer. Speech 11 219   He [sc. the producer] decides that in
order to open the show a certain amount of money will be necessary.
This amount is the production nut.
[End excerpt]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 7:36 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Making the nut" explained
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 12:28 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com>
> quoted:
>
>> > I included the OED's note attached to another figurative sense of "nut",
>> that it
>> > alluded to _the difficulty in cracking a nut's hard shell_, which I
>> suppose
>> > _explains the "making the nut" idiom_.
>>
>
> I don't understand. Except for that of the black walnut, for anyone with a
> nutcracker or just a random stone, there's no difficulty in cracking a
> nut's hard shell such as to explain the "making the nut" idiom. And, even
> if there was any difficulty in cracking a nut's hard shell, how does that
> "explain" the idiom?
>
> Am I completely missing the point? There's always a very good possibility
> that that is the case, when I'm the only one with a question. :-(
>
>
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org