nut

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. An indehiscent, hard-shelled, one-loculated, one-seeded fruit, such as an acorn or hazelnut.
2. n. A seed borne within a fruit having a hard shell, as in the peanut, almond, or walnut.
3. n. The kernel of any of these.
4. n. Slang A crazy or eccentric person.
5. n. Slang An enthusiast; a buff: a movie nut.
6. n. Informal A difficult endeavor or problem: Painting the closet was a tough nut to crack.
7. n. Slang The human head.
8. n. Music A ridge of wood at the top of the fingerboard or neck of a stringed instrument, over which the strings pass.
9. n. Music A device at the lower end of the bow for a stringed instrument, used for tightening the hairs.
10. n. A small block of metal or wood with a central, threaded hole that is designed to fit around and secure a bolt or screw.
11. n. Slang The cost of launching a business venture.
12. n. Slang The operating expenses of a theater, theatrical production, or similar enterprise: "The [theater] has simply failed to attract enough paying customers per week to meet its nut” ( Variety).
13. n. Vulgar Slang A testicle.
14. v. To gather or hunt for nuts.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The fruit of certain trees and shrubs which have the seed inclosed in a bony, woody, or leathery covering, not opening when ripe. Specifically, a hard one-celled and one-seeded indehiscent fruit, like an achenium, but larger and usually produced from an ovary of two or more cells with one or more ovules in each, all but a single ovule and cell having disappeared during its growth. The nuts of tho hazel, beech, oak, and chestnut are examples. In the walnut (Juglans) and hickory (Carya) the fruit is a kind of drupaceous nut, seemingly intermediate between a stone-fruit and a nut.
2. n. In machinery, some small part supposed in some way to resemble a nut. Specifically— A small cylinder or other body with teeth or projections corresponding with the teeth or grooves of a wheel.
3. n. Same as chestnut-coal.
4. n. plural Something especially agreeable or enjoyable.
5. n. plural The testicles.
6. n. A cup made of the shell of a cocoanut or some other nut, often mounted in silver.
7. n. A bulbous plant, Iris Sisyrinchium, of southern Europe.
8. To gather nuts: used especially in the present participle.
9. n. Loosely, a similar vegetable product, as a tuberous root (earth-nut, ground-nut), leguminous pod (peanut), or seed(physic-nut).
10. n. In general, the lower end or heel of the bow: opposed to point or head.
11. n. In Australia:
12. n. See the extract.
13. n. A daredevil.

Wiktionary

1. n. A hard-shelled seed.
2. n. A fastener: a piece of metal, usually square or hexagonal in shape, with a hole through it having machined internal threads, intended to be screwed onto a bolt or other threaded shaft.
3. n. slang A crazy person.
4. n. slang The head.
5. n. US Financial term for monthly expense to keep a venture running.
6. n. US, slang The amount of money necessary to set up some venture; set-up costs.
7. n. US, slang A stash of money owned by an extremely rich investor, sufficient to sustain a high level of consumption if all other money is lost.
8. n. music On string instruments such as guitars and violins, the small piece at the peghead end of the fingerboard that holds the strings at the proper spacing and, in most cases, the proper height.
9. n. En, a unit of measurement equal to half of the height of the type in use.
10. n. historical, UK slang An extravagantly fashionable young man of the 1910s and 1920s.
11. n. vulgarity, slang, rarely used in the singular A testicle.
12. n. vulgarity, slang Semen, ejaculate.
13. n. An extreme enthusiast.
14. n. poker Relating to the nuts, the best possible hand on a given board.
15. v. UK, transitive, slang To hit deliberately with the head; to headbutt.
16. v. intransitive, slang To ejaculate (semen).

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Bot.) The fruit of certain trees and shrubs (as of the almond, walnut, hickory, beech, filbert, etc.), consisting of a hard and indehiscent shell inclosing a kernel.
2. n. A perforated block (usually a small piece of metal), provided with an internal or female screw thread, used on a bolt, or screw, for tightening or holding something, or for transmitting motion. See Illust. of 1st Bolt.
3. n. The tumbler of a gunlock.
4. n. (Naut.) A projection on each side of the shank of an anchor, to secure the stock in place.
5. n. vulgar slang Testicles.
6. v. To gather nuts.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. Egyptian goddess of the sky
2. n. someone who is so ardently devoted to something that it resembles an addiction
3. v. gather nuts
4. n. usually large hard-shelled seed
5. n. a small (usually square or hexagonal) metal block with internal screw thread to be fitted onto a bolt
6. n. half the width of an em
7. n. a whimsically eccentric person
8. n. one of the two male reproductive glands that produce spermatozoa and secrete androgens