nuthead

plural nutheads · alternative nut-head · alternative nut head

1. A silly or crazy person; kook.

   “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!”

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

   2 more examples

   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.

   1997, Johnny Payne, Kentuckiana, →ISBN, page 208

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

2. A stupid person; fool; idiot.

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

   1993, Vivien Alcock, Othergran, →ISBN, page 12

   2 more examples

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

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

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

3. Alternative form of nut-head.
   1. Outer porition of a nut.

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

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

      3 more examples

      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.

      1908, The Master Painter - Volume 13, page 12

      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.

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

      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.

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

   2. A head made out of a nut.

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

      2004, Loralyn Radcliffe, Creative Crafts for Clever Kids: Exciting Projects from Everyday Stuff, →ISBN