[Ads-l] "Making the nut" explained

[George Thompson]

The portion of the "nut" entry in the OED that mentions the nut's shell is
4. With allusion to the difficulty of cracking hard-shelled nuts: a
difficult question or problem; a matter or undertaking difficult to
accomplish; a person hard to deal with, conciliate, etc. Now usu. with
*crack*, esp. in a hard (also tough) nut to crack  .

Even with modern technology -- that is, nutcrackers -- getting at the
edible part of the nut requires some effort, as opposed to those fruits
where the hard part is inside.  Cherries are my favorite.

At least, I like the nut-shell as an explanation for "making the nut"
better than the "nut" that holds the wheels on a circus wagon.

GAT




On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 7:36 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>



-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998..

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