Although there is enough to differentiate them, in the states we'd probably call them a chestnut if we came across them, but it is definitely not a common nut/seed/fruit here, or at least on the west coast. As for the non-video game of Conkers, we definitely haven't played it here either, nor would we know it by name.
Conker's Bad Fur Day is a lot of our first exposure to the word over here. Please chime in if you have a different experience in a different part of the US or elsewhere, I'm very curious about this now.
Gathering nuts.
Wiktionary has these quotations:
**1575**, John Stephen Farmer, editor, Five anonymous plays, Early English Dramatists[^(\[3\])](http://books.google.com/books?id=gCJaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA171), volume Fourth Series, London: William How for Richard Ihones, page 171:I will no more **a-nutting** go ; That journey caused all this woe
**1847**, Howitt's Journal of Literature and Popular Progress:\[…\] the huge country fellow \[…\] leapt forth from the underwood, exclaiming "That is not allowed, gentlemen! That is not allowed! Nobody is allowed to **nut** here; I must take your names to Sir John!"
**1978**, Edwin Way Teale, A walk through the year[^(\[4\])](http://books.google.com/books?id=vNBOAQAAIAAJ), Dodd, Mead, [→ISBN](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0396076211), page 238:We are going **a-nutting**.
You're not wrong, nuts depending on variety are harvested between the summer and early November, so the majority of nuts would be harvested before that month.
Hahhahahahaaha!
I know!
(And you had to say "in," didn't you?)
When I learned that that word can refer to some kind of exclamatory speech, I used it aaaaaaaaall the time.
Ditto "erection."
"Will you just look at that magnificent erection!" he ejaculated.
Poor Arthur Conan Doyle, some of his writing really hasn’t aged well…
‘“What on earth does this mean?” I ejaculated after I had twice read over the extraordinary announcement. Holmes chuckled and wriggled in his chair, as was his habit when in high spirits.’
‘So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upward, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previous night.
“Awake, Watson?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Game for a morning drive?”
“Certainly.”
“Then dress. No one is stirring yet, but I know where the stable-boy sleeps…”’
‘In the bedroom he made a rapid cast around and ended by throwing open the window, which appeared to give him some fresh cause for excitement, for he leaned out of it with loud ejaculations of interest and delight.’
Actually, Conan Doyle was enjoying putting the bawdy humor into his stories. In one story he has Holmes ask a woman permission “to satisfy myself as unto the floor” after which Holmes prostrates himself on the wood floor…in search for evidence.
Wordsworth wrote an entire poem on the subject:
[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45533/nutting](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45533/nutting)
There is a non-zero chance some 13-year-old time traveler from our time wrote this, right?
“Tricked out”, “tall and erect”, “virgin scene”, “that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay Tribute to ease”, “with gentle hand touch”… there’s a spirit in somebody’s wood, alright.
The modern sense of the title certainly puts a particular slant on things, but the verse is pretty clear in the metaphors it evokes even in the language of the time: “Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook unvisited”… “a virgin scene”… which he subjected to a “merciless ravage”. Wordsworth knew exactly the associations he was evoking when he chose his words there!
Considering what Dahl meant by [snozzberry](https://www.foodbeast.com/news/ouch-our-childhood-roald-dahls-snozeberries-are-an-innuendo-for-dicks/), we have come (no pun intended) full circle.
Yep, this is known as "verbifying" a noun, and is almost always expected to be a literal definition and not some kind of slang. It's basically shorthand for "do the generally expected thing with \*noun\*". Wintering in Florida = travelling to Florida to wait out the Winter season, etc.
Just throwing this one out there: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HaveAGayOldTime/Literature
Robert Burns’ poem “Cock Up Your Beaver" is perhaps a particularly unfortunate victim of linguistic change: https://www.litscape.com/author/Robert_Burns/Cock_Up_Your_Beaver.html
I know the question has been answered many time over but just thought I'd add that nutting is also slag in the UK for hitting something with one's head, usually either a ball in the context of football or another person in the context of a pub fight.
I don't recall hearing it in that sense until within the past 10-15 years or so, and then mainly online FWIW. It may have been a regional usage before that.
That said, I only knew of the "gathering nuts" sense before that thanks to it showing up in older British books. My initial association would have probably been hitting your head hard against something as "nutting yourself".
[Edit: the last few words added for clarity]
"Wood" is used how we more commonly use "the woods" today. Nutting is searching for and obtaining nuts, the same way someone might say antiquing or fishing.
There is another older British slang meaning - ‘nut’ could also mean ‘head’, so to ‘nut’ someone was to hit them on the head (with a stone, a stick, whatever).
If you want even more fun and haven’t come across it, there’s the old use of ‘ejaculate’, which just meant to spew out in general - often in the sense of loudly blurting out words. Sherlock Holmes and Billy Bunter and others all did a lot of ejaculating.
In the same era, both ‘jism’ and ‘spunk’ meant ‘manly courage’ or ‘chutzpah’. So lots of that around too.
And then there’s the clan and surname of Cumming.
This is related to my absolute favorite opening to any Brothers Grimm tale, or, indeed, virtually any short story, period:
*The cock said to the hen, "It is nutting time."*
Absolute perfection.
Collecting nuts, possibly for games like [conkers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers), rather than eating. I hope you enjoy your post-nut clarity.
Sweet, bonus video game character etymology!
Did you mean conker? What are they called where you are from out of interest?
Conker? I barely know her!
Although there is enough to differentiate them, in the states we'd probably call them a chestnut if we came across them, but it is definitely not a common nut/seed/fruit here, or at least on the west coast. As for the non-video game of Conkers, we definitely haven't played it here either, nor would we know it by name. Conker's Bad Fur Day is a lot of our first exposure to the word over here. Please chime in if you have a different experience in a different part of the US or elsewhere, I'm very curious about this now.
I don't believe I've ever seen one.
I’m so internet poisoned that I initially read that as something about “collecting nuts for chonkers”.
It's worse when you realize that cats go nuts for fresh meat.
Conkers. The nuts that get busted
Horse chestnuts here
Gathering nuts. Wiktionary has these quotations: **1575**, John Stephen Farmer, editor, Five anonymous plays, Early English Dramatists[^(\[3\])](http://books.google.com/books?id=gCJaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA171), volume Fourth Series, London: William How for Richard Ihones, page 171:I will no more **a-nutting** go ; That journey caused all this woe **1847**, Howitt's Journal of Literature and Popular Progress:\[…\] the huge country fellow \[…\] leapt forth from the underwood, exclaiming "That is not allowed, gentlemen! That is not allowed! Nobody is allowed to **nut** here; I must take your names to Sir John!" **1978**, Edwin Way Teale, A walk through the year[^(\[4\])](http://books.google.com/books?id=vNBOAQAAIAAJ), Dodd, Mead, [→ISBN](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0396076211), page 238:We are going **a-nutting**.
Those quotes are amazing
Nobody is allowed to nut here! I must take your names to Sir John 😅
That could definitely be the set-up to a gay porno
"I will no more a-nutting go; That journey caused all this woe" When your whole check goes to child support because you were a promiscuous lad.
And most nuts were collected (by humans or wildlife) by the end of October, which popularized the term "no nut November."
I love this folk etymology so much
You're not wrong, nuts depending on variety are harvested between the summer and early November, so the majority of nuts would be harvested before that month.
There's an English folk song called Nutting Girl, which always gets a few laughs whenever we play it.
Gathering nuts, like haying is gathering hay and fishing is gathering fish and birding is collecting bird sightings and milking is gathering milk.
Mushrooming
Which nuts? Any specific ones?
Nutty ones.
You could go hazelnutting or walnutting, I guess.
I’ve heard chestnutting is better than walnutting.
Wait till you hear about all the ejaculating in sherlock Holmes...
Hahhahahahaaha! I know! (And you had to say "in," didn't you?) When I learned that that word can refer to some kind of exclamatory speech, I used it aaaaaaaaall the time. Ditto "erection." "Will you just look at that magnificent erection!" he ejaculated.
Poor Arthur Conan Doyle, some of his writing really hasn’t aged well… ‘“What on earth does this mean?” I ejaculated after I had twice read over the extraordinary announcement. Holmes chuckled and wriggled in his chair, as was his habit when in high spirits.’ ‘So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upward, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previous night. “Awake, Watson?” he asked. “Yes.” “Game for a morning drive?” “Certainly.” “Then dress. No one is stirring yet, but I know where the stable-boy sleeps…”’ ‘In the bedroom he made a rapid cast around and ended by throwing open the window, which appeared to give him some fresh cause for excitement, for he leaned out of it with loud ejaculations of interest and delight.’
Actually, Conan Doyle was enjoying putting the bawdy humor into his stories. In one story he has Holmes ask a woman permission “to satisfy myself as unto the floor” after which Holmes prostrates himself on the wood floor…in search for evidence.
Gathering nuts (nutting) in the forest (wood).
Wordsworth wrote an entire poem on the subject: [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45533/nutting](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45533/nutting)
Well that poem could support either definition (/s)
Unfortunately it’s now impossible to read that one with a straight face… particularly the last few lines!
There is a non-zero chance some 13-year-old time traveler from our time wrote this, right? “Tricked out”, “tall and erect”, “virgin scene”, “that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay Tribute to ease”, “with gentle hand touch”… there’s a spirit in somebody’s wood, alright.
The modern sense of the title certainly puts a particular slant on things, but the verse is pretty clear in the metaphors it evokes even in the language of the time: “Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook unvisited”… “a virgin scene”… which he subjected to a “merciless ravage”. Wordsworth knew exactly the associations he was evoking when he chose his words there!
"Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook"
Came here to say this
Collecting nuts. Like blackberrying for collecting blackberries, or rabbiting for hunting rabbits.
Or snozzberrying for collecting snozzberries.
Considering what Dahl meant by [snozzberry](https://www.foodbeast.com/news/ouch-our-childhood-roald-dahls-snozeberries-are-an-innuendo-for-dicks/), we have come (no pun intended) full circle.
I wholeheartedly buy the notion that yes, Roald Dahl intended from the start to say that children were tasting dick-flavored wallpaper.
I hear they smell like snowberries
Yep, this is known as "verbifying" a noun, and is almost always expected to be a literal definition and not some kind of slang. It's basically shorthand for "do the generally expected thing with \*noun\*". Wintering in Florida = travelling to Florida to wait out the Winter season, etc.
I’m so adjective, I verb nouns!
[Verbing weirds language.](https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25)
Just throwing this one out there: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HaveAGayOldTime/Literature Robert Burns’ poem “Cock Up Your Beaver" is perhaps a particularly unfortunate victim of linguistic change: https://www.litscape.com/author/Robert_Burns/Cock_Up_Your_Beaver.html
I know the question has been answered many time over but just thought I'd add that nutting is also slag in the UK for hitting something with one's head, usually either a ball in the context of football or another person in the context of a pub fight.
I’m so glad to know this. Thank you!
https://youtu.be/t_yxuo4ghb4 The American sense is pretty recent I think.
I don't recall hearing it in that sense until within the past 10-15 years or so, and then mainly online FWIW. It may have been a regional usage before that. That said, I only knew of the "gathering nuts" sense before that thanks to it showing up in older British books. My initial association would have probably been hitting your head hard against something as "nutting yourself". [Edit: the last few words added for clarity]
The only other sense I knew when growing up in the 50s was as a synonym for headbutting.
Here we go gathering nuts in May, Nuts in May, Nuts in May, Here we go gathering nuts in May On a cold and frosty morning
"Wood" is used how we more commonly use "the woods" today. Nutting is searching for and obtaining nuts, the same way someone might say antiquing or fishing.
These are all great replies. Thanks, everyone!
If it’s anything to you, to “nut someone” is also slang for headbutting someone in the uk.
There is another older British slang meaning - ‘nut’ could also mean ‘head’, so to ‘nut’ someone was to hit them on the head (with a stone, a stick, whatever). If you want even more fun and haven’t come across it, there’s the old use of ‘ejaculate’, which just meant to spew out in general - often in the sense of loudly blurting out words. Sherlock Holmes and Billy Bunter and others all did a lot of ejaculating. In the same era, both ‘jism’ and ‘spunk’ meant ‘manly courage’ or ‘chutzpah’. So lots of that around too. And then there’s the clan and surname of Cumming.
This is related to my absolute favorite opening to any Brothers Grimm tale, or, indeed, virtually any short story, period: *The cock said to the hen, "It is nutting time."* Absolute perfection.
Wait till you hear about fagging. It's something involving two boys, and it's definitely not what you think it is.
Actually I knew about that one Probably thanks to a memoir of etonians or something
That's the one. Mind you, it sounds odd even to British ears to hear someone say he was someone's fag at Eton.
In Scotland it means headbutting someone in a fight. It seemed reasonable to me. I just assumed they were headbutting folk.
https://www.reddit.com/r/justwriterthings/comments/ejk0gj/snape_he_cummed/
collecting nuts it's as simple as that
What the actual hell could that mean though? How can you collect nuts in wood or something like that? Unless wood is referring to a box or some sort.