NUTSHELL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Nutshell

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/nˈətʃˌɛl/ Listen

noun

Nutshell n.

The shell or hard external covering in which the kernel of a nut is inclosed.

Hence, a thing of little compass, or of little value.

(Zool.) A shell of the genus Nucula.

in a nutshell in a summarized and very abbreviated form; of statments, descriptions, reports, and other communications; as, to describe the convention in a nutshell.

To be in a nutshell or To lie in a nutshell, to be within a small compass; to admit of very brief or simple determination or statement. "The remedy lay in a nutshell."

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Etymology of 'Nutshell'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Nutshell" Quotes from Famous Books

... and commonplace one. Fisher had met a man who knew another man who was either a Turk or an Albanian. They had learnt that Kara was in the habit of keeping large sums of money in the house and they had planned to rob him. That was the story in a nutshell. Somewhere the plan miscarried. It was when he came to the incidents that occurred on the night of the murder that T. X. followed ...

— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... to take Colonel Corkran's place on the Candace as conductor. And I want you and your friend Fenton to go up Nile in charge of the splendid steam dahabeah I've bought to supplement the Mediterranean trip. There you have my motives in a nutshell!" ...

— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It's about the foot and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on ...

— Ulysses • James Joyce

... slum, has come nearer that ideal than any and all the rest of us. And the president of it these ten years, the same who with his brother tried to reform Gotham Court, is the head, too, of the citizens' union which is the whole reform programme in a nutshell. All of which is as it ought ...

— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... set down the empty pitcher and drawn his breath, he began to criticise the liquor which it had lately contained.—"Sufficient single beer, old Pillory—and, as I take it, brewed at the rate of a nutshell of malt to a butt of Thames—as dead as a corpse, too, and yet it went hissing down my throat—bubbling, by Jove, like water upon hot iron.—You left us early, noble Master Grahame, but, good faith, we had a carouse to your honour—we heard butt ring hollow ere we parted; ...

— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

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