nuthead

English

Alternative forms

• nut-head
• nut head

Etymology

nut +‎ head

Noun

nuthead (plural nutheads)

1. A silly or crazy person; kook.
   • 1997, Johnny Payne, Kentuckiana, →ISBN, page 208:

     If she ever referred to the events, she laughed them off as silly kid stuff, and called the ex-boyfriend a nuthead, the way you speak of someone who drove around in high school smacking metal mailboxes with a baseball bat.

   • 2015, David S. Cohen, Krysten Connon, Living in the Crosshairs: The Untold Stories of Anti-Abortion Terrorism, →ISBN:

     As Joanne Hartzell, a longtime clinic administrator in a South Atlantic state, stated pithily in explaining why she does not worry, “We're a target with some, but there are nutheads out there everywhere.”

   • 2015, Nancy Marie Brown, Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World, →ISBN:

     “The people at the British Museum told us afterwards,” Einarsson recalled, “that they get so many letters every day from nutheads! They considered us nutheads!”

2. A stupid person; fool; idiot.
   • 1993, Vivien Alcock, Othergran, →ISBN, page 12:

     Mum doesn't want a diamond ring out of a cracker, nuthead!

   • 2003, Carl Barks, Donald D. Ault, Carl Barks: Conversations, →ISBN, page 35:

     Hey, I wasn't kidding myself that I was writing for a bunch of stupid little nutheads. I was writing for kids who could understand stuff as well as I could — at least, I felt they were that way.

   • 2003, Gilbert Foster Crane, Andrea McDougall, I Had Vera: An Autobiography of a Working Man, →ISBN, page 36:

     You called all of us nutheads. I can do that arithmetic as good as you can.

3. Alternative form of nut-head
   1. Outer porition of a nut.
      • 1908, The Master Painter - Volume 13, page 12:

        When you are striping gears and come to a nuthead run right over it, with fine lines on its edges, or around the nut, as may be preferred.

      • 1927, George Stephen Baker, The Economy of Tank Testing of Ship Forms and Research in Ship Propulsion:

        Model experiments have been made with two pairs of propellers, differing only in the fact that in one, excrescences representing nutheads were left on the boss.

      • 1930, Wilfred Jones, How the derrick works, page 36:

        The steelworker is straddling the cross beam and is screwing on the nutheads by hand before finally tightening them with his wrench.

      • 1972 May, Wayne Heyman, “How It Works: The Marine Battery”, in MotorBoating, volume 129, number 5, page 161:

        When disconnecting or replacing clamp bolts, use only the correct size open-end wrench. Pliers should never be used for loosening or tightening nuts; they could round or otherwise damage the nutheads.

   2. A head made out of a nut.
      • 2004, Loralyn Radcliffe, Creative Crafts for Clever Kids: Exciting Projects from Everyday Stuff, →ISBN:

        Bend a paper clip into the shape of eyeglasses; glue them to the nuthead.

Anagrams

• de-haunt, dehaunt, haunted, undeath, unhated