Other forms: nutshells
A nutshell is the hard case round a nut, and the phrase for saying something briefly. In a nutshell.
The phrase comes from an ancient story about a copy of the Iliad small enough to fit in one. To put something in a nutshell means the whole of it rather than a summary of part.
1nounnutshellThe hard case round a nut, and the phrase for saying it briefly.
“In a nutshell, the whole scheme depended on one supplier.”
nutshell is a shell.
Old English hnutscill is nut plus shell, and the compound has survived unchanged in sense.
Proto-West Germanic
*hnutskallju
Old English
hnutsċiell
Middle English
notschelle
English, today
nutshell
From Middle English notschelle, from Old English hnutsċiell, from Proto-West Germanic hnutskallju, equivalent to nut + shell. Cognate with stq Nuteskele, Nuteskil (“nutshell”), Dutch notenschaal (“nutshell”), German Nussschale (“nutshell”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA