Nutshell
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 The shell that surrounds the kernel of a nut.
"For men be now tratlers and tellers of tales; What tidings at Totnam, what newis in Wales, What ſhippis are ſailing to Scalis Malis? And all is not worth a couple of nut ſhalis."
- 2 the shell around the kernel of a nut wordnet
- 3 A short book summarizing an area of law.
- 4 A small boat; a boat considered small in comparison to the seas.
"[A]t last the fishing-line stood straight out behind, and the stone weights jumped along the tops of the billows, while the seas - notwithstanding the guiding hand of the pilot sought to avoid them - broke over our little nutshell, and sent the spray high above mast and sail."
- 1 To summarize (from the term in a nutshell). transitive
Example
More examples"They say fine words are no virtue if they're insincere and that's him in a nutshell. He's all talk but doesn't mean a word of it."
Etymology
From Middle English notschelle, from Old English hnutsċiell, from Proto-West Germanic *hnutskallju, equivalent to nut + shell. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Nuteskele, Nuteskil (“nutshell”), Dutch notenschaal (“nutshell”), German Nussschale (“nutshell”).
Related phrases
More for "nutshell"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.